SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney (review)

I attended the media preview of the 21st Biennale of Sydney, SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, curated by the biennale’s first Asian artistic director, Mami Kataoka, chief curator of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan. This biennale explores the ideas of equilibrium and engagement and how we interact with and view the world by drawing on knowledge systems from both the East and the West. Kataoka draws on an old Chinese system of knowledge called “wuxing.” Put simply, this represents both a five-element theory of Chinese philosophy (wood, fire, air, earth, and metal) and a Western worldview as expressed in quantum mechanics. Kataoka uses these ideas to explore two or more objects or events being superpositioned or overlapped. The concept is open-ended and could cover pretty much anything and everything, which is not necessarily a bad thing—indeed, this seems to have been the standard modus operandi for many of the previous biennales, both in Sydney and internationally.

Rather disappointingly, there is no published catalog for this biennale, which I think is very shortsighted, as a catalog’s shelf life as a resource document is invaluable. However, I was told that there will be an online version at the end of the exhibition. One of the reasons for this change is the commissioning of new works by the biennale, including works that involve process and duration. According to biennale management, this meant that a catalog could not be produced until the biennale was almost finished. One could speculate that once the biennale is over, an online catalog may not be of much interest except to the artists who were in the exhibitions. Not publishing a hard-copy catalog at the start of the biennale is a poor strategy, and I hope that the next director reverses the decision.

There is, however, a small guide—more of a media kit, really—that gives some background to the seventy artists and artist collectives from six continents. The biennale used seven sites, and I am not convinced that it was a great idea to have it strewn across Sydney this way. My last two experiences of the biennale have been disappointing, as I barely had time to visit all the venues because they were so dispersed. Perhaps for me the standout biennale was 1990’s The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art, directed by the influential German curator René Bloch. It was successful in part because the majority of the works were installed in one location—the Bond Stores, a series of mid-nineteenth-century warehouses on Sydney Harbour. This density allowed the works to reverberate off each other, creating a dialogue, a visual exchange. It was exciting, and the works at the other sites—which were not far away—benefited from that focus. You wanted to see everything.

Conversely, the spread of the seven venues means that my visit to this year’s biennale will count as seven visits instead of one, so it will look good when audience numbers are crunched. This is increasingly important with regard to public funding. Cultural events have to be popular and inoffensive if organizations wish to keep their funding and not upset government agencies, which would rather spend money on mega sports stadiums.

The installation of the biennale works at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) is certainly the most strategic and intelligent use of the various galleries that I have seen in years. The AGNSW has been a venue partner of the biennale since 1976, three years after its inauguration at the Sydney Opera House (which has returned as a venue this year).

It is also no surprise that the director has included projects involving community participation, such as Ciara Phillips’s Workshop (2010 to present) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia: This working print studio will...