Venice Biennale date for Scotland’s contemporary arts for 2011
11/12/2009
The Scottish Arts Council today, Friday 11 December, confirmed Scotland would participate in the world’s largest and most prestigious showcase for contemporary visual arts, La Biennale di Venezia in 2011.
The 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 will be Scotland’s fifth appearance at the internationally renowned exhibition and will build on the critical success of previous Scotland and Venice projects which, with the support of partners National Galleries of Scotland and British Council Scotland, have promoted artists including Martin Boyce, Turner Prize winner Simon Starling and Turner Prize nominees, Cathy Wilkes Jim Lambie and Lucy Skaer. Today’s announcement also confirms the continuing commitment of the Scotland and Venice partnership.
The announcement was made at the opening of the Martin Boyce No Reflections exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) in Dundee, which has returned to UK following its run at the 2009 Biennale. No Reflections, commissioned by the Scotland and Venice partnership and curated by Judith Winter and Graham Domke of DCA, received over 20,000 visitors while in Venice. The exhibition has been freshly curated for the showing at DCA as part of the Centre’s 10th anniversary celebrations. No Reflections opens on 12 December 2009 and runs until 14 February 2010.
Amanda Catto, Head of Visual Arts, Scottish Arts Council said:
“The Scotland and Venice project is vitally important in promoting Scotland as a centre of excellence for the arts and we are delighted to announce our continued support, along with a commitment from Creative Scotland 09 Ltd, to offer artists a recognised international platform for the development and presentation of their work.
Paul Docherty, Director, British Council Scotland said:
“The Scotland and Venice project demonstrates the ability of strong partnership to present a product that is far greater than the sum of its parts. We are delighted the Scottish Arts Council is committed to this venture and we look forward to developing the project further through our colleagues across the UK and internationally.
Simon Groom, Director of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Galleries of Scotland added:
“We are delighted to build upon the strengths of Scotland and Venice to ensure that the best of contemporary art from Scotland continues to achieve the international visibility and recognition it deserves.”
Minister for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop said:
“Scotland’s contemporary culture is one of our greatest assets so it is vital that there continues to be a distinctly Scottish presence at the world’s foremost visual arts festival. The Scotland and Venice partnership has shown that great things can be achieved internationally when strong partnerships are formed.
‘Of course it is just as important that Scots at home have access to our talented creators’ work, so I am delighted that Martin Boyce’s stunning No Reflections is now shining a spotlight on Dundee – a great tribute to Dundee Contemporary Arts in its 10th anniversary year.”
Judith Winter and Graham Domke, Scotland and Venice 2009 curators added:
“Scotland and Venice has been an incredibly important experience for Dundee’s artistic community. As curators it has been an honour to work with Martin Boyce and the partners and to be able to demonstrate the strength of contemporary art in Scotland to such a significant international audience.”
Exhibition Information
• Over 20,000 people visited No Reflections, Martin Boyce’s stunning exhibition commissioned by Scotland and Venice at the 53 rd International Art Biennale, Venice making it one of the most successful exhibitions of the Biennale. The news was announced at the opening of the UK showing of the work in a new exhibition curated by Graham Domke and Judith Winter as part of DCA’s 10th anniversary celebration.
• Boyce’s work relates to and transforms the space around him challenging us to think about who we are and our place in this world. The specially commissioned pieces in No Reflections were conceived for two very contrasting spaces. In Venice the work was spread out over seven interconnected rooms in a 15th century Venetian Palazzo - the space imagined as an abandoned garden, introducing the pieces into the fading grandeur of the palace. For its UK showing the artist has worked with the modern, purpose-built galleries of Richard Murphy’s award-winning DCA building with the artworks presented in a newly curated exhibition. Whereas the interconnecting rooms of the palazzo allowed a linear sense of discovery, the spaces at DCA reveal new and different relationships between work and context.
Speaking of the challenges of making work for two contrasting venues, Boyce said: "the palazzo itself and my research in the work of Carlo Scapa all fed into the show that was seen in Venice; the process of installing the show, seeing the work in the space and understanding how it functions has now fed into show for DCA. It is an accumulative process.”
• The concept for No Reflections makes reference to a starting point in Boyce’s work - a photograph of four concrete trees created by Joël and Jan Martel for the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. These trees, Boyce says, “represent a perfect collapse of architecture and nature”, visualising oppositional elements of urban existence: the natural versus the constructed, the populated versus the uninhabited, old versus new.”
• Architect Richard Murphy will give a talk From Adige to Tay on 15 December 2009 which, like No Reflections, links Italy and Dundee. Meanwhile Martin Boyce will give an artist’s lecture on 3 February 2010. A programme of gallery tours, workshops, screenings of films selected by Martin Boyce complements the showing of No Reflections. For full details see Notes for Editors.
Notes to editors• The first Scotland and Venice partnership project was in 2003 – at that time the partners were Scottish Arts Council and British Council Scotland. The National Galleries of Scotland joined the partnership in 2005.
• The Scottish Arts Council has committed £300,000 to a Scottish presentation at Venice each Biennale.
• The specially commissioned artworks featured in No Reflections, Martin Boyce’s elegiac exhibition for the 53rd International Art Biennale, Venice are presented in a new exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations. The exhibition opens on 12 December 2009 and runs until 14 February 2010
• The project offers Scottish audiences the chance to view high quality international contemporary art direct from the world’s main showcase event in Venice.
• Scotland and Venice is only possible because of the partnership that has been formed between Scottish Arts Council, National Galleries of Scotland and British Council (Scotland office and London office).
• Scotland and Venice offers opportunities for development in Scotland – for example, Scotland and Venice facilitated the ‘New Seekers’ programme as part of Newfoundland; a collaboration between Scottish Sculpture Workshop and Hospitalfield, Arbroath. The New Seekers became artists in residence in Venice which has allowed for international networks to be developed and be brought back to Scotland through both residency and exhibition opportunities.
• Since 2003 Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland have developed separate exhibitions as a compliment to the British Pavilion, broadening the range of the country’s representation at the Biennale. In that year, Scotland presented Zenomap, an exhibition of the work of Claire Barclay, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling, curated by Francis McKee and Kay Pallister as well as other artists associated with Scotland. This was followed in 2005 by Selective Memory, featuring work by Alex Pollard, partnership Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, and Cathy Wilkes, curated by Jason Bowman and Joanne Bradley.Scotland and Venice 2007 was curated by Philip Long featuring the work of Charles Avery, Henry Coombes, Louise Hopkins, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer and Tony Swain.In 2009, the work of Martin Boyce is presented in the exhibition No Reflections, curated by Dundee Contemporary Arts - Judith Winter and Graham Domke.
Contact email(s)
media.office@scottisharts.org.uk
Issued by: Scottish Arts Council
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