The 24th Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns

Berlin-based Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero are the second joint artistic directors in the history of the Biennale of Sydney (BoS), and they have chosen artists working across multiple disciplines, celebrating diverse human connections, and resistance in times of conflict.

History and identity are the main themes of this BoS, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ and Indigenous issues as well as climate change, colonisation, the horrors of war, and the atomic age. The curators bring an enthusiasm to the project and have tried to create a “carnivalesque” atmosphere that celebrates life. The BoS takes place across seven venues. Costinaș and Guerrero’s ambition is to challenge our preconceptions through expressions of hope and joy that celebrate the resistance and resilience that occurs during times of crisis, such as the HIV / AIDS pandemic, atomic testing in the Asia-Pacific region, transgressions against Indigenous people, past and present colonisation, and currently the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Guerrero’s interest in sociology and Costinaș’ in art history is apparent but it’s sociology that has asserted itself as the dominant concern, with the quality of the art not appearing to be a significant factor. That isn’t in itself uninteresting and a focus on “minorities” or the margins is a common theme of recent global biennales. The writings of the fourteenth century Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun inspired the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s assertion of nomadic solidarity. This was rooted in Khaldun’s concept of asabiyyah (tribal spirit or solidarity) and an impetus for conscientious action driving individuals to trust and support one another and resist assimilation. Sometimes this has been expressed as those on the margins moving to, and becoming, or occupying, the centre.

In the Remigia cave north of Valencia, Spain, there are paintings dating from around 6500 BCE. One of these has fourteen individuals alongside each other watching a lone figure departing the group. It appears to be an ostracism or social death. It’s believed that in hunter-gatherer tribes individuals who were not part of the group or who broke its rules were killed or cast out in order to maintain order. Inclusion required exclusion. It’s too easy to allude to equality without understanding its limits.

The history of various dominant civilisations and their impacts on those that they conquered, whether we are talking about the Assyrian Empire, the Egyptians, or the Roman Empire, or in recent memory the eighteenth and nineteenth century European empires, makes stark that there has always been conquest and colonisation. Who hasn’t been invaded? What tribes haven’t fought each other for various reasons? What people haven’t desired what some other group has or might have? It is endless. History is riddled with coveting parties. What is civilised in one group is barbarous in another. Hierarchies exist in every human culture, and they exist in every primate culture, too.

A new venue for the BoS is the late federation White Bay Power Station, a relic of twentieth century industrialisation; unlike other NSW post-industrial conversions it hasn’t been gutted. It’s a 38,000 square meter heritage-listed site that once powered Sydney’s tram and rail network. Most of its spaces are yet to be refurbished but the Boiler House and Turbine Hall are in use as exhibition sites. There are some outstanding works on show, but many are simply overwhelmed by the scale of the architecture and remnants of the original site. Some of the more successful installations have been generously supported by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain; the financial support is evident in the ambition of these works. The fourteen new works by Indigenous artists from around the world were commissioned by the Fondation Cartier’s inaugural First Nations curatorial fellow, the Kuku Yalanji artist Tony Albert.

Peruvian artist Cristina Flores Pescorán’s textile installation Abrazar el sol (Embrace the Sun), 2023–24, is suspended in the Turbine Hall like some handspun webbing reminiscent of the texture in a fine crepe bandage. Her work explores the relationship between her body and its healing processes after disease and medical intervention. It references the veils conceived by the pre-Incan Chancay culture. Embracing her heritage the artist uses the components of warp and weft that transform thread and yarn into material for the construction of Chancay veils.

Also in the Turbine Hall is Darrell Sibosado’s Galadan at Gumari, 2024. It’s a large LED light installation based on and inspired by the riji (pearl shell) designs and traditional lore that have been shared by Bard generations from the Kimberley coast in Western Australia, and makes a reference to the discarded scales of the Rainbow Snake Aalingoon.

US film director and animator Andrew Thomas Huang’s The Beast of Jade Mountain – Queen Mother of the West, 2023–24, is his first sculptural work. Huang decided to scale it up when he understood the enormity of the site, and was assisted in its realisation by the Terra Foundation for American Art. It’s the blue-faced version of Xiwangmu, one of the most ancient and powerful goddesses in the Chinese pantheon, with complete control over life, death, creation, and destruction. By contrast Polish artist and animator Agnieszka Polska’s The New Sun, 2017, is a more literal work, referencing the sun with its animated sun-child delivering a thoughtful monologue to its audience.

It was a pleasure to see some older contemporary bolts from the vault, including works by the political artist collective from Japan, Dumb Type (S/N, 1994) and Australia’s trailblazing VNS Matrix (A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991), as well as other digital prints from the early 1990s housed in the steam punk venue. That chronicler of life, William Yang’s Publicity Photographs for Nigeria tour #1–#21, 1976, held their own, in a gentler way, in the more subdued Boiler House.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Tracey Moffatt’s film Doomed, 2007, created with Gary Hillberg, is part of a series that uses montage to assemble iconic scenes from assorted films. In this case, it’s the disaster trope that includes earthquakes, tsunamis, and other earth-shattering cataclysms. This mash-up reminded me of the quote in the introduction to the BoS catalogue “catastrophe is often a fabrication of power.” Perhaps this is a play on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949, where the three world superstates were in a never-ending war with each other, diverting support and resources towards the maintenance of dominant systems rather than where it was needed.

The recent renovation of Artspace seems to have reduced its gallery space, creating a rather awkward layout. This has possibly been driven by the commercial imperative that now shapes both the Art Gallery of NSW and the MCA, to have gallery spaces that can also be used to host entertainment events. These pressures were revealed in a recent statement by Fergus Linehan in the Sydney Morning Herald. The new chief executive for Carriageworks (once a venue for BoS) said that the organisation is pausing “to look at how we can now do [visual arts] financially. It’s mostly a question of finance because . . . it’s not a ticketed . . . event.”

However, one of the more important works in BoS is at Artspace. This is the installation GARI (language), 2024, by r e a, who is from the Gamilaraay / Wailwan and Biripi peoples of NSW. This installation uses the dual layering of text in the Indigenous languages of their families and expresses resilience after the failure of the Voice referendum.

After a tour of the six venues—seven, if you include the projections on the Sydney Opera House sails—I was left with a sense that depth was sacrificed to achieve breadth and with it a token inclusivity. There will always be the Other. That is the nature of humans. We are a clan or mob. It’s us and them; hierarchies exist in every human culture.

A final thought: is it time for the BoS to reassess itself? It could have fewer artists supported with a bigger budget, in fewer venues—this would allow for a compression of the works as a viewing experience and make the event less a festival or carnival, and more about art.

This review was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 67 

Images courtesy of the artists Art Gallery of NSW, Artspace, Chau Chak Wing Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, UNSW Galleries, White Bay Power Station.

EXHIBTION
24th Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns
9 March – 10 June 2024
Art Gallery of NSW, Artspace, Chau Chak Wing Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, UNSW Galleries, White Bay Power Station, and the Sydney Opera House