Saturday 29 November 2014
Monday 24 November 2014
Saturday 22 November 2014
Friday 21 November 2014
Wednesday 12 November 2014
Saturday 8 November 2014
Manifesta 10
Melbourne Knowledge Week 2014 has kicked off with a program of more than 90 events showcasing the
ideas, innovation and institutions that make Melbourne a leading knowledge
city. The week-long festival allows you
to discover Victoria’s supercomputer, explore behind the scenes at Melbourne’s
greatest medical institutions, tour Melbourne’s most futuristic workplaces,
talk to entrepreneurs, and discover the big ideas driving our economy.
As part of my personal discovery tour
of some of the events taking place over the week, I decided to sample the free
talks. There is an extensive program of
free lectures and talks across the city, covering a broad range of topics from David Ritter on Being Free to The Concept of God in an Islam Society. Perhaps a presentation from the Women’s
Federation for World Peace is more up your alley.
I decided to pop into the National
Gallery of Victoria to listen to Jane Devery talk about her experience at the Manifesta 10 Biennale which was held in
St Petersburg, Russia this year. This
talk was presented by the International Specialised Skills Institute.
Devery is the curator of contemporary
art at the NGV. She participated in the
St Petersburg-Melbourne 25th Anniversary Sister City Fellowship
which enabled her to attend the opening week of Manifesta 10 – the European Biennale of Contemporary Art.
This year the Biennale was held in
collaboration with the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Apparently,
this association was quite controversial on a number of levels. Firstly, the Biennale is rarely engaged in a
traditional and formal arts establishment.
Secondly, the political climate in Russia at the moment – with the Pussy
Riot history, new laws regarding homosexuality, and the Ukraine crisis – led to
a range of protests which very nearly meant the festival wouldn’t happen. The
festival did, however, go ahead and Devery hopped on her plane with great
relief.
As mentioned earlier, Manifesta 10
took place at the Hermitage Museum. This
museum comprises the Winter Palace which used to be the home of the Tsars, and
the General Staff Building. These two
massive edifices encircle Palace square where parades and performances take
place continuously. The Hermitage buildings
were commissioned by Catherine the Great and she is the one who commissioned
the first collections they housed.
The General staff building used to be
the offices of the various ministries, but this year it was officially declared
as their museum of contemporary art, so it is fitting that Manifesta 10 should take place there. Devery told us a fantastic story about the
hundreds of cats who inhabit the basement tunnels. Cats have been living in the basement tunnels
since the buildings were first erected.
Their job was to control the rodent population. They had their own personal staff and were
very well taken care of until around 1917 – the time of the revolution. The cats remained there however, until WWII,
when they all died in the siege of Leningrad (the new name given to St
Petersburg after the Russian Revolution).
After the war, the basements were repopulated with cats and it is still
their home today.
Engaging with this story was Dutch
artist Erik van Lieshout. He spent nine
weeks living with the cats in the basement and then created an installation for
Manifesta 10 called Basement. During his time down there, van Lieshout
built better facilities for the cats and then put on an exhibition just for
them. What a wonderful project!
Devery showed us slides and talked us
through her journey. She visited both
the General Staff building which is now the home of contemporary art, and also
showed us some of the Winter Palace collection.
These had also been cunningly interspersed with contemporary art which
juxtaposed itself in this classical environment.
It was a wonderful talk, and Devery
had great anecdotes as well as a wealth of art and art history knowledge. One of the things I came away with was the
understanding that when art commentators describe a work as being ‘elusive’,
what they really mean is they have no clue what the work is or is supposed to
mean.
Friday 7 November 2014
Sunday 2 November 2014
Saturday 1 November 2014
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