Day 62 and I finally made it to Pier 2/3. I have to admit I’d been putting it off, never feeling quite in the mood to make the time commitment needed to appreciate the sound piece by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. I’d heard a rumour that it took 45 minutes to get through. In the way of rumours, its length stretched and extended until my friend Vernon (and yes this is his real name, he is not so innocent as to need protection) said to me, as I tried to convince him to keep me company, “I heard it’s 2-3 hours long.” “No,” said I, “It’s only 45 minutes.” But this, it seems, was not a particularly persuasive argument.
As it turns out, the piece titled, “The Murder of Crows”, is only 30 minutes long, but the point is that even this seems like a long time to our fast paced, attention deficient, channel surfing minds. Perhaps too long? More

A lot has been said in the media and the general arts community of the increasing mix between art fairs and biennales. This overlap is often portrayed as a negative one as if money someone decreases the openness of the art world. We will often pay $13 dollars for a terrible movie but paying to see art has been seen as something of a road block for the general public. On visiting the Melbourne Art Fair last weekend this was not a feeling that I got. Ironically a strange girl gave me her spare ticket (thank you!) while I was waiting in line and so I did not actually pay for my ticket. But having paid for the airplane ticket down there is wasn’t exactly free either. More

Watch: Artscape: The Art Life at the Biennale of Sydney: Pierre Huyghe, A Forest of Lines segment (21.2 MB)

Excerpted from: Artscape: The Art Life At The Biennale Of Sydney. Broadcast 10:00pm Tuesday, 22 Jul 2008 on ABC television.
Reproduced with kind permission of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Watch this extraordinary 24 hour event unfold from beginning to end in the Concert Hall at Sydney Opera House for the 16th Biennale of Sydney.

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A Little Wit Missing?

I sneaked out of Biennaled Sydney to visit the Melbourne Art Fair last week – and was struck by the difference between the commercial and the aggressively unsaleable offered by BOS. In fact, the only meeting point I found was on the Annandale Galleries stand where William Kentridge had pride of place following its ‘Telegrams from the Nose’ show in Sydney.

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