The 16th Biennale of Sydney Preview day opens today with two artists’ talks — both presented at CockatooIsland — Tony Schwensen’s performance and the first of the Biennale’s collateral exhibitions, “Milk,” at Anna Schwartz Gallery. “Milk” is a solo project of photographs documenting the performance works of the Australian artist Mike Parr from 1971 – 2008.
The first two artists’ talks — a project through which the visitors have a ‘way of access’ into the artists’ works — focus on the Japanese artist Jin Kurashige and Paul Pfeiffer, the Hawaiian artist, whose work invites viewers to exercise their imaginations or to project their own fears and obsessions onto the art object. Outside the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tony Schwensen hosts a sausage sizzle as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to raise funds to assist in realizing artists’ projects for the 2010 Biennale of Sydney.
Open from today till September the city’s leading museums – the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as well as Artspace and outdoor sites such as the old industrial Pier 2/3, the Royal Botanical Gardens and the stunning Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour will host more than 180 artists, including some of the twentieth century’s most revolutionary artists from Kasimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Luigi Russolo, Marcel Duchamp and Tina Modotti to Jean Tinguely, Gianni Colombo, Atsuko Tanaka, Joseph Beuys, David Medalla, León Ferrari, Jannis Kounellis, Mario and Marisa Merz, Bruce Nauman and Hélio Oiticica, as well as some new works by artists including Lene Berg, Gerard Byrne, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, William Kentridge, Anawana Haloba, Pierre Huyghe, Brian Jungen and Paul Pfeiffer.
A unique online venue has also been developed in which works are set up in a non-linear way: film, audio, images, interactive works, live streaming performances, texts and links to existing websites are presented together by themes and are continuously uploaded to the venue to create an ever-changing space.