Venice is a city of fast appearances and even faster disappearances. A vaporetto will suddenly materialise out of what seemed an empty piece of lagoon and swoop down on the water ferry stop; a hurrying person will disappear around a corner, but when one reaches that corner, the street will be empty.
Addresses are hard to locate. Even when one takes the precaution of having a Biennale opening party venue carefully marked on the street map by the hotel receptionist, one arrives at that spot only to find no one in the vicinity knows where that particular street is. There are too many tiny streets! Every inquiry from a passer by is met with a careless shrug.
This happened again one evening when I had in my hand a printed out invite from the Sean Kelly Gallery to a party in a gorgeous looking palazzo. I texted SCAD curator Laurie Farrell: 'Are you there yet? I can't find this place'. The reply comes back 'I can't find it either. I'm dashing out to a dinner'. So I give up and arrange to meet friends Lisa Brice and Sean O'Toole on the Accademia bridge, four ferry stops away, but on the way up the Grand Canal, I suddenly spot the palazzo in question from the water.
So the three of us head for the party, and it is lucky we do have the printed invite to get past the door guys, but it is beginning to rain, and the event is in the garden, everyone is speaking French, and no one is paying any attention to the video playing at the end of the garden, by Laurent Grasso, in which a hawk with a camera attached is flitting around the countryside. But the bellinis are flowing freely, and it is the beginning of another Venice evening.
There is one object it would be impossible for any Biennale goer to miss: Brit artist Marc Quinn's massive and clumsily articulated sculpture of the naked and pregnant Alison Lapper, disabled from birth by thalidomide. (see top of this column). The original was carved in Carrara marble and sat on the art column in Trafalgar Square in London. This one is a marble toned inflatable located outside San Giorgio Maggiore, and judging by the comments, could win with ease the title of least liked work at the 2013 Biennale.
Sharing a Venice moment with Laurie Farrell
