Australia at the XXV Bienal de São Paulo
In June 2001 Robert MacPherson was named by the Australia Council as Australia's official representative to the XXV Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil. MacPherson nominated Trevor Smith, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art
Gallery of Western Australia as curator for the Australian project. Subsequently, Smith was approached by the Bienal to participate in their thematic section, which was to be based on the selection of artists in relation to eleven cities around the world. To represent Sydney, Smith chose work from John Barbour, Adam Cullen, Rodney Glick & Lynnette Vovoedin. Jan Nelson. and Raquel Ormella. The following is a dialogue in interview - not so much a forensic description of what happened. but an exploration the fundamental proposition of the Bienal theme and the relationship of curatorial and artist participation within an international event like a biennial.
Edited excerpts from 'lconografias Metropolitanas' preamble, by Bienal Curator, Alfons Hug, March 2001.
THE theme of the biennial is 'Metropolitan lconographies'. This topic refers not only to the image of the metropolis in contemporary art, but also to the manner in which urban energy influences today's artists. We start from the assumption that still today, as was the case some hundred years ago with Paris, Berlin and Moscow, it is the metropolis that essentially defines artistic practice. But now with the mushrooming of mega-cities within the last decades, Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been moving into the limelight, too. Here important urban dramas are played out, putting new survival strategies to the test. After all, it is the critical mass of the metropolis that transforms 'zeitgeisf into art. Considering the sheer size of many cities, including Sao Paulo, yet another... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline