A weekend trip to the oldest and most prestigious contemporary art festivals in the world, the Venice Biennale. Held every two years, the Biennale is an excellent opportunity to see works by leading, international and up-and-coming contemporary artists. Over 65 countries take part, and an estimated 900,000 people are likely to visit in 2007.
There are two main strands to the Venice Biennale: the Giardini which houses 30 permanent national pavilions. Tracey Emin will be representing Britain in the Giardini, only the second female ever to represent the UK at the Biennale with a solo exhibition (the first was Rachel Whiteread in 1997). There is also a large, international exhibition curated by the Biennales director which takes place in the buildings of the adjacent, formal naval dockyard, known as the Arsenale. This years director is the American Robert Storr, the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York.
Other Biennale exhibitions take place in venues spreading across the city of Venice. Scotland will be presenting the work of six artists, in an exhibition curated by Philip Long, Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The selected artists are Charles Avery, Henry Coombes, Louise Hopkins, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer and Tony Swain. The works will be housed in the Palazzo Zenobio, home to the Armenian Cultural Institute in the Dorsoduro district of Venice.
Northern Ireland’s presentation will feature the work of Willie Doherty in a show curated by Hugh Mulholland, and Wales will show the work of Richard Deacon, Merlin James and Heather & Ivan Morison, curated by Hannah Firth.
We will visit the best of what the Venice Biennale 2007 has to offer.
