release date: 29 march 2022
This episode comprises an unedited 50 minute recording I made visiting two of the six venues of the 23rd Biennale of Sydney on Monday 21st of March 2022. Developed by Colombian curator and artistic director Jose Roca, and a curatorium of art workers from several Sydney establishment art institutions, the Biennale is titled ‘rivus’ and explores varying relationships between humans and water. There’s much to read on the biennale website - biennaleofsydney.art - and an exquisite accompanying book ‘rivus: a glossary of water’ published to expand upon and carry forward the conversations, enquiries and arguments proposed across this ambitious, inspiring contemporary art project.
The two venues heard in the recording are The Cutaway at Barangaroo, a cultural space like an enormous sandstone cave opened in 2015, created though excavation for the larger surrounding reclamation development, and Pier 2/3, one of a series of distinctive timber maritime cargo sheds built circa 1920, each is like a horizontal skyscraper - only 2 storeys high but about 175 meters long.
Each venue presents works by many artists together in very large architecturally distinctive open spaces using a variety of materials, methods and media including sonic generations both acoustic and electronically amplified. This aural agglomeration effect creates a unique sonic signature in each space, as the happenstance intermingling of mostly looping sound sources of varying durations performs a perpetually variant yet essentially stable atmospheric affect that cannot help but contribute to visitors experiences of all the artworks.
This recording begins in the Cutaway where I walk around the space as various works take my attention. Exiting the cutaway I take a lift to the top of the headland park and walk through back streets down to the waterfront again and eventually into the second venue, Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay for another perambulation amongst artworks before exiting again into the everyday activity of inner city Sydney, on Gadigal country of the Eora Nation.
Please visit the Biennale website biennaleofsydney.art for detailed information about the exhibition, its many artists, events and propositions. And you can find out more about the podcast at the episode guide at sonicsketchbooks.net
