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The 22nd Biennale of Sydney, titled NIRIN ('edge' in Wiradjuri) will present artworks from 101 artists and collectives, including 39 Australian artists across Sydney galleries from 14th March to 8th June 2020.
More than 700 works will be presented at the Art Gallery of NSW, Artspace, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Cockatoo Island, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and National Art School.
The public program - NIRIN WIR, meaning edge of the sky - includes over 600 events, with the vast majority being free. This extensive program of live and site-specific artist activations proposes new ways for audiences to experience contemporary art, share time and learn from one another.
NIRIN pushes audiences to see beyond what they know, to challenge history, to be a part of the story and to immerse themselves in inspiration and imagined futures.
Highlights include Tennant Creek Brio’s dynamic series of paintings on discarded Western objects that draw inspiration from their experiences at home in the Northern Territory (Artspace); Joël Andrianomearisoa’s textile installation which weave a multi-storied trail through the MCA resonating with his companion piece in the Court Galleries of the Art Gallery of New South; Ibrahim Mahama’s epic installation of sewn coal sacks in the Turbine Hall on Cockatoo Island; visual activist and photographer Zanele Muholi’s presentation of three bodies of work that look at the politics of race, gender and sexuality (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia); and Hannah Catherine Jones’s audio-visual work using pop-cultural and archival material, poetic motifs and provocative imagery to tell a story of the African diaspora (National Art School).
22nd Biennale of Sydney Artistic Director, Brook Andrew advises “‘NIRIN proposes that creativity is an important means of truth-telling, of directly addressing unresolved anxieties that stalk our times and ourselves. Most importantly, it is a place from which to see the world through different eyes, to embrace our many edges and imagine pride in ecologically harmonious and self-defined futures. In urgent times of shifting boundaries and conflicts, we desperately need to alter our actions to show respect for ancient cultures. Now is a potent time to heal and feel the rush and tension of new futuristic possibilities.”
Biennale of Sydney Chief Executive, Barbara Moore adds “‘The Biennale of Sydney offers artists an opportunity to push themselves in new and creative ways and exhibit their work in a truly international context. By supporting artists, we offer audiences a chance to expand and transform what they know by considering and contemplating different perspectives. Realising an exhibition of this scale is an epic undertaking. But our job is to support artists and audiences and keep them safe. We are prepared, and we will do that with agility, creativity, respect and collaboration no matter what the world throws at us.”
Joël Andrianomearisoa, born in Madagascar and with studios in both Paris and Madagascar, has works titled “There might be no other place in the world as good as where i am going to take you” in both the Art Gallery NSW and MCA. For the Art Gallery NSW, Andrianomearisoa uses sheer black curtains to initiate a series of veilings, creating a work that rests across and between moments in the Gallery’s collections, occupying a liminal ‘edge’ space. Bearing poetic combinations of words and text, these fabric interventions constitute a playful counter-architecture. Across three levels of the MCA, Andrianomearisoa’s textile installation weaves a multi-storied trail that resonates with his companion piece in the Court Galleries of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Here his textiles veil and drift between solid descriptions of space, shifting an experience of the galleries that plays with our perceptions, and what we can and can’t see.
Karla Dickens born in Sydney and living and working in Goonellabah, Australia has a work titled “A Dickensian Circus” installed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales vestibule. Speaking about her work Dickens comments “With its ‘classical’ style and pretensions, the Art Gallery of New South Wales vestibule is a perfect post-colonial backdrop for my new offering A Dickensian Circus. Built in 1901–02 from Sydney sandstone, with glass domes above and mosaic tiles below, I aim to reclaim this venerable antechamber using rusty, bent and gnarly sculptures which divulge the hidden stories of marginalised people rarely seen in such a grandiose and majestic setting.”
The 22nd Biennale of Sydney, titled NIRIN, is open – free to the public – from 14th March to 8th June 2020.
Images: Tennant Creek Brio (top) Joël Andrianomearisoa in front of one of his works at MCA (centre) and Karla Dickens at AGNSW (above). All images by Karen Sweaney Editor Australasian Leisure Management
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