C105 review

Venice Biennale: Wales and Scotland

 The Venice Biennale over the years has been a platform to communicate cultural distinctiveness; it has also been a place for political expression and dissent. However, above all others it is a Mecca for cultural tourism to the point of over-consumption and cultural lethargy. The fiftieth International Art Exhibition is no exception; it expresses nationalism and identity fixations, within heavily curatorial lead expositions.

Scotland and Wales broke away from the British Council this year, and it was a first for them to exhibit as independent projects, matching their respective country's political devolution from Westminster. Further was an exhibition curated by Patricia Fleming (Scottish) and commissioned by Michael Nixon (English) for Wales. The fact that the curators and two of the four artists are not Welsh has been repeatedly criticised, given that this was Wales' first major platform on the international art scene.

A highlight was Cerith Wyn Evans piece Cleave 039 (transmission; "Visions of The Sleeping Bard" by Ellis Wynne). This was a Morse-code machine, translating the 1703 Welsh text into rhythmic tones and transmitting the code by a search beam into the sky over Venice. The dramatic beam that contained a classic of Welsh literature connected to an earlier version of the text in Spanish in a separate exhibition in Venice, Utopia Station. This work associated the notions of language, translation and history. The method of expression through transmitted encrypted code alludes to cultural territory and ownership. Paul Seawright's photographs, Between, are a study of Welsh landscape as an outsider very much intrigued by the country. His use of slower exposure times emphasise the in between nature of this work, between night and day, beauty and tragedy, the real and the unreal.

Simon Pope's intervention is based on his 'Ambulant Science Studio', which is a continuing exploration into people and their activities. For Venice his investigations will develop over a five-month residency at the site, where people will interact and react onsite and online. While I was there for the opening of Further it was difficult to engage in his process; however I will be intrigued to see the collective results following the residency. Unfortunately for Bethan Huws and us, her film ION ON was cancelled because she didn't have the right viewing conditions for its screening.

The range of practices from Pope, Seawright and Evans is varied, and they were commissioned as a means of displaying Wales' diversity. The rationale is the promotion of the country as reflecting an internationalism which provides an environment which in turn promotes artistic practice from within and which can attract artists from outside.

Similarly, Scotland produced a myriad of activities called Zenomap. Associated with the main exhibition the curators, Francis McKee and Kay Pallister, coordinated a full programme of artists' events, screenings, and web-based work under the title. This project is a tribute to contemporary art as a means of stressing diversity and inclusion. Scotland is a country that is a hive of activity and the curators definitely asserted this in their programme.

The central element of Zenomap was the exhibition at the Palazzo Giustinian-Loin featuring work by Jim Lambe, Claire Barclay and Simon Starling. The most effective was Jim Lambe's elaborate disco-kitsch installation that complemented the ornate baroque rooms of the Palazzo. Barclay, like Lambe, is concerned with the distinctive nature of the interior of the Palazzo; however the objects didn't quite exude the same strength within the architecture. I understand her work is subtle and minimalist, disjointed and anomalous, but the setting overshadowed the objects.

Starling's construction of a floating island, which was originally meant for Loch Lomand, is like a fish out of water, almost literally. It extends a very particular local issue, concerned with cultivation and destruction, to a universal concern, within the context of Venice.

The most exciting thing about Wales and Scotland in Venice is that they are there. The platform has been created. In Venice the stakes are no less political than aesthetic. Let's push the stakes in favour of the aesthetic.

Nathalie Weadick is Director of Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.

Further, Venice Biennale, 15 June - 2 November, 2003

Zenomap, Venice Biennale, 15 June - 2 November, 2003

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