”The Feeling of What Happens”
The Sydney Biennale begins June 4, and like any good art biennale, its theme is stated in typically overblown rhetoric. Of course, because this is the “Year of the Built Environment,” the show is meant to incorporate architecture, so there are curlicues of phrasing to make a parallel to anatomy, so that our sense of self and sense of place are part of what the art in the show is meant to define . . . skip it. There are a number of gallery openings to coincide with the major venue exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of NSW, Artspace, Museum of Sydney, Royal Botanic Gardens (don’t get me started on the republicanism issue and name changes), and Opera House, as well as lectures and performances around and about. I never managed to attend even the Whitney’s biennale, so I ought to make a point of getting to at least some of this one, even though the point of these things is often for the artists to try to “push the boundaries” of art’s definition, an effort that most usually results in some truly awful junk. Since it runs through August, there’ll be time anyway, at least to see “the unknown artist.