In her last chapter, Ruth Dillon gets off the Biennale beaten track and samples San Zaccaria, Italian reggae and the famous Venice Regatta…

Archetypes, art and religious ephemera: how to travel around a city such as Venice? What soundtrack could we compile to such a journey? Maybe a mix of David Bowie, The Next Day, a little Lou Reed, Street Hassle, The Small Faces, Imperial Smoke City and The Stones…

A soundtrack is optional, but when in an unfamiliar city a touch of the familiar often helps. Imagine viewing a Tintoretto or a Palladio inspired façade with Dexter Gordon or The Herbaliser, simple but unequivocal fun. Ms. Mina Bihi and I found our way into San Zaccaria an immensely ornate space, a church with a mixture of gothic and renaissance architectural styles.

The church holds many religious relics, but our trip was solely to see the work of Antonio Gambello, a sculptor and architect who brought a gothic sensibility to San Zaccaria, which is a rare find in Italy. The paintings and frescoes on display are truly the works of masters. Bellini, Tintoretto, Van Dyck and Castagno sit resplendent in a semicircular gable and supporting side quadrants. Tile works from the 12^th century are still visible, and much of the gothic gilded altar pieces were paid for by the nuns who lived adjacent to the church.

This is a small indicator of the individual wealth of the Roman Catholic Church, the largest patrons of the arts in renaissance Europe. Napoleon looted this church and countless others when he entered the city in 1797; many of the artworks then resided in Paris until they were liberated some twenty years later. We sat in awe of the art, whilst normal Venetians dropped in and out to pray, reflect and escape the throng of Venice in late summer.

Our evening was of a completely different flavour: pizza and conversation, Venetian style. A grand family get together, with over twenty Venetian’s sharing jokes, music and food. The style and panache of Venice is easy to understand when you realise Italy holds more tailors per square mile than anywhere else in the world.

But it isn’t the style of the Venetians that holds you; it is their warmth and carefree attitude. I was told that after Mussolini, Italy tried to bring Italians together by establishing one lingo… the Venetians opted out. They have their own lingo and it has helped them to retain an earthy sensibility, which is not dissimilar to northerners or New Yorkers really.

So to Saturday eve, Venice and reggae. Venice is connected by a series of waterways and lagoons. Dotted all over Venice are ancient Forts; which, in days of yore, were military strategic outposts. Today Fort Marghera is one of the biggest, hosting music festivals, art events and some pretty awesome installations. Here ‘Sir’ Oliver Skardy, Italian reggae artist, formerly of Pitura Friska (Wet Paint), plays. Hardy is one of a hardcore crew of reggae artists whose songs are in Italian or Napolitano, which is no mean feat.

Italian reggae to the un-tuned ear was an experience to be sure; we rocked out for a few hours, skanking and swaying amidst the late summer night air. Then off to another music event, a small drive away, where we hit the outdoor nightclub, another surreal experience: kids pumped up on heavy bass, rocking Italian-style. Just two minutes walk away was the alternative stage, with more authentic Venetian tunes, and less-bass-more-politico-pop.

There is far too much to fit into another paragraph, but suffice to say we did attend the annual Venice Regatta, an historic and colorful event. It is said the race was originally a welcome to Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, who forewent her inheritance to become a resident of Venice in the 14^th Century.

Sitting at the Grand Canal we watched the race, and then slipped into a back street for more ristretto. Our last days in Venice were spent with friends, Pedro, Jennifer, Simone, Katia, Vincenzo, Michaelo and Spada. We did decide to take one last trip to see some more art, but it was Monday, and like Tate Liverpool, galleries in Italy are closed too on Mondays. So we joined the tourist throng, ate more pizza and pasta, and let’s just say we did stay up very, very late and had some extra curricular fun… Venetian style.

Ruth Dillon

Images courtesy Mina Bihi

Sketches From Venice, Chapters One and Two

Venice Biennale 2013: In Pictures

Venice Biennale and Tea at the British Pavillion

In chapter two of her Venice odyssey, Ruth Dillon has no option but to giver herself over to a full art overdose…

The 55^th Venice Biennale is immense. Venice is a city consumed by, built upon and source of art; from Tintoretto to Marino Auriti, the man who was the inspiration behind the 55^th Venice Biennale.

Marino Auriti had a dream; his vision, to create Il Palazzo Enciclopedico, a space to hold knowledge of all types, with no hierarchy or division. The Biennale holds fast to the idea of an Encyclopedic Palace; artefacts sit alongside artworks, creating a unique dynamism in the city.

The Giardini hosts the central pavilion, and the artiglierie. Artworks from Richard Serra, Shinro Ohtake, Steve McQueen, Mark Manders, Tacita Dean, Imran Qureshi, Aleister Crowley, Gianfranco Baruchello, Xul Solar, Sarah Lucas and Eva Kotatkova sit amidst resplendent architecture.

It is easy to O.D. on art here: the work, and in particular the artists, hold me suspended, in time and place, make me question, think, stop and breathe…

Ai Wei Wei is an artist of monumental ambition and achievements. His socially engaged practice is to be respected, digested, and acts as a remedy to more non-descript practitioners who shy away from the real; great art should always have the capacity to create a dissenting perspective.

Housed in Sant’Antonin, Castello, and Guidecca Island, are Straight and Sacred. Sacred is a sculptural installation in direct response to his experience of incarceration for alleged tax evasion.

Straight references an earthquake in 2008, a natural catastrophe that due to faulty government buildings saw the death of 5000 schoolchildren. For this work Wei Wei sourced more than 100 tonnes of rebar (twisted metal structures) from the rubble and spent three years restoring them to their original forms.

The work is calming and allows for a kind of reflective reverence. The floor installation is simple, strong and creates perspectives reminiscent of those found in nature: undulating lines roll like hills in a landscape. The rusted twisted metal compels one to adjust one’s position, allowing for line, shape and shadow to reveal itself in space.

So to Dutchman Mark Manders. For me, Manders’ work, Room with Broken Sentence, is a Biennale highlight. An installation of consummate skill and epic proportions, the work spans 23 years, combining older works with the new four metre high Working Table.

A traditional bust, spliced and supported by wood, the visual impact is direct, and impressive, the languages of the materials subverted, creating a new discourse, whilst also bringing an element of the formal and conceptual vocabulary of the artist.

A window installation of newspapers cleverly uses every word in the English language, the handcrafted pieces are harmonious and insightful, presented (and received) as a coherent whole; mysterious, tender, strong and inspired.

At the Istituo Santa Maria Della Pieta was the New Zealand pavilion and Bill Culbert’s Front Door Out Back, an eight-part installation, which relates primarily to the domestic world, normal pieces of furniture are appropriated and arranged as objects d’art.

Light is a key aspect; the entrance is long and a single sheet of glass sits at the end of the hallway, reflecting the light from the Riva Degli Schiavoni. As you stand at the entrance your own form becomes shadow, in turn becoming part of the installation.

Daylight Flotsam Venice – plastic vessels which would ordinarily house cleaning materials – is placed in the grand hall, arranged and linked by fluorescent lights. The carpet of light and shape renders the bottles into a morphing swamp of lines. Low light levels create a kind of broken geometry; no shadow or reflection is cast; a reference to (or subversion of) the Venice glass blowing trade perhaps?

In a smaller room off the main garden, is Where are The Other Two? where various types of chairs and tables house fluorescent light, the lights placed vertically through the centre of each table. Sculpturally strong, these works have an integrity that creates energy.

Culbert has said he hoped that the spaces could bring one on a journey, a journey much like the continuous flow of water on the canals of Venice. He noted that the entire space is at land level and water level, referencing the importance of line in this year’s Biennale work.

Parallel Convergences at Casa Dei Trei Oci, saw the works of Anatoly Osmolosvky and Pawel Althamer juxtaposed, by curator Thomas Cullinan. A collateral project for Moscow based V-A-C foundation, the artists – one Russian one Polish – share the generational connection of living through communism to post communism.

Political and subversive, the focus for Althamer is inner exploration, the human, and in an eight piece film installation, we see him (and a series of collaborators) experiencing altered states of consciousness – from LSD to peyote induced states to hypnosis a la rural.

Osmolovsky can be considered the more direct of the two. His film installation Seven Deaths in Moscow was arresting, disturbing, and truly unnerving: I felt in the presence of true suffering.

Past works include actions and provocations, intended as acts of creative and political expression, which could be termed as punk performative interventions. A sculptural piece on exhibition here is a floor; normal save for three upturned pieces, sharp, graceful and cutting.

On the second floor I notice a broom. The broom held a flag; it had been carefully placed in such a way as to easily miss the work. This subtlety subverts the normal perimeters of the gallery, creating sculpture in spaces where audiences aren’t expected to experience art.

Osmolovsky’s art was a tonic to the mundane beige of the current social climate, where so many people digest endless amounts of reality TV fodder, and chat happily about the new constructed TV pop star, but balk at discussing much of import.

More upbeat was Tacita Dean’s work; as ever, simply ephemeral. Her slow moving film hovered and swayed over a simple drawing; a backlit projection hung in the air, ensconced in a darkened space with room for only one chair, making viewing personal yet expansive.

Working within a solid framework of cinema, cinematic history is unified with an artistic sensibility. Dean manages to at once transport and place the viewer in a landscape of history, context and beauty; an illusory experience.

Dealing with the fears, anxieties, phantasms and phobias taken from accounts of psychiatric patients, and children who have difficulty communicating with the external world, Eva Kotatkova presented Asylum, “A fragmented model, which is composed from several small segments, either of metal structures, paper cut outs, texts and many images.”

The work acts as a visual archive or catalogue. The presence of a grid/cage (which has featured in Kotatkova’s earlier works), acts as a visual statement: the observer is externalised, creating a safe distance, thus divorcing us from the disturbing elements of the human psyche.

The mixed media installation also examines the psychological effects of institutions and disciplinary structures, which further act as barriers to individuals who are already at odds with the world.

I want to close with Carl Jung’s Red Book (or Liber Novus). The collected drawings and musings of the great Swiss psychotherapist, exhibited for the first time as art works in and of themselves.

Termed as record visions through a process he called active imagination, these works (created 1914-1930) are known to have inspired and assisted him in the development of his theories and one such concept known today as the collective unconscious.

Fascinated by Tibetan Buddhism, and in particular the Tibetan mandala, the mythic imagery held within the Red Book, was a direct result of a difficult period in Jung’s own life, a period he classed as a creative illness.

During this time he confronted his own mind and explored notions of archetypes, individuation and collective unconscious. This period saw Jung identify and confront the anima and animus of his own psyche.

It has been suggested that for creative illness we could also read extended episode of psychosis. Whatever Jung experienced I think a touch of madness often borders on genius and is more normal, for want of a better word, than we care to admit.

Where would we be today if creative illness (or whatever term you choose to use) ceased to exist? What a sanitary, clinical and less interesting place the world would be.

Words: Ruth Dillon, Pictures: Mina Bihi

Venice Biennale continues until 24th November

In the first part of three, Ruth Dillon recounts a trip full of soul and fuelled by espresso, to the Venice Biennale…

How can one write without reflection or inspiration? What inspires? People? Art? Architecture?

Beneath the Venetian skies are hundreds, indeed thousands of untold stories. From the café owner whose love of Opera and Verdi, led him to name each of his children from Verdi’s unforgettable masterpieces, to Paolo Brandolisio, the Master Oarlock, or Forcola Maestro, who creates the oars for the Gondolas of Venice, to Stefano Tamburini and Tanino Liberatore, the creators of the funky brutal anti hero, Ranxerox.

A post-punk mechanical dysfunctional anti-super-hero, Ranxerox is made from spare photocopier parts, and the Terminator movie franchise is rumored to have been inspired by the Italian cult comic hero. Tanino Liberatore went on to create album covers for many mavericks in the music industry, including the musician, songwriter and composer Frank Zappa. If you look at Zappa’s Man From Utopia, you can see the influence and Italian graph style borne from the Ranxerox serial.

So to our hosts, and our arrival in Venice. Simone Belcastro and Katia Carraro are the coolest most amazing Venetians I know. Simone and Katia we know from the European Dirt Track Racing Motorbike Circuit, a bunch of people who like to race fast, party hard, and ride the most inappropriately stylish motorbikes in Europe.

There is, photographer Ms Mina Bihi and myself included, a UK contingent of TEAM DAVIDA, a funky crew of motorbike aficionados, lovers and riders, who often grace the European motorbike track circuit with that wholly irreplaceable scouse wit, style and repartee, and a few kick ass bikes too. Simone and Katia had just ridden back from Corfu, after a summer DJ set. They travelled on bike through ex-Yugoslavia, Montenegro and Albania to meet us with minutes to spare… Oh heaven in an espresso cup, Venice.

We arrived for the opening of the Venice Film Festival, with George Clooney and Hayao Miyazaki in town. Although Clooney was in town, he’s not our cup of coffee, so to speak. Miyazaki on the other hand, will forever be an inspiration and hero of mine… So with the release of The Wind Rises at Venice, I was disheartened to hear he will retire after a phenomenal career, inspiring so many of us with his ephemeral and sublime Studio Ghibli creations.

Even before the release of The Wind Rises, news was that the film’s subject matter was rubbing the powers tat be up the wrong way. A beautiful piece of cinematography, and semi autobiographical in nature, the historical fantasy deals with the dreams of a young Kaze Tachinu (a fictionalized version of Jiro Horikoshi), aircraft engineer and designer of the Mitsubishi A5M Japanese fighter aircraft of WWII, which were constructed at slave labour camps in the latter part of WWII.

Miyazaki has fielded blunt verbal attacks from the left and right alike, and from the South Koreans too; as with all artists/auteurs Miyazaki has remained true to his interpretation and vision, though the questions that many must face in the aftermath of war are only touched upon in an almost abstracted manner, but the animation is simply a joy to behold.

For the lovers of Miyazaki’s works, there will be no disappointment, this film is mesmerizing, and like other Studio Ghibli creations it transports you to a place that soothes and tears the soul in equal measure. Other European premiers at Venice were Stephen Frears Philomena and Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem.

Andzrej Wajda also previewed his documentary on Polish leader Lech Walesa, but sadly our schedule was so tight that we couldn’t spare the time to see all as we were in pursuit of art, funk and good espresso.

Words and pictures, Ruth Dillon