The Field Equation, 2006 (detail)Daniel von Sturmer
"3 artisti: 3 progetti: 3 siti." if the Australia Council for the Arts' logo is to be believed, the Australian presence at the Venice Biennale (until Nov. 21) is limited to the three official artists whose works bob up all around La Serenissima: in the dank Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, where Susan Norrie's videos of environmental dysfunction play; in the secret gardens of Palazzo Zenobio, where Callum Morton's recreation of his demolished childhood home gives off good-humored gusts of dry ice; and in the Giardini di Castello, where Daniel von Sturmer's video installations spill across the wave-like plywood plinth of the shed-like pavilion.
But wait—as in a late-night steak-knife commercial, there's more. Equally impressive are the works of skater video artist Shaun Gladwell, epic landscape photographer Rosemary Laing and conceptualist Christian Capurro, all invited by Biennale director Robert Storr to show independently in the Italian pavilion and Arsenale. Capurro, in particular, stopped traffic with his intriguing project, Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette, which had invited hundreds of people to erase the pages of a 1986 copy of Vogue Hommes, clocking up over 260 hours and turning the magazine (by Capurro's calculation) into an $A11,349.18 work of art.
Then there's No. 7: In Emily Jacir's Material for a Film, 2005, the New York-based Palestinian artist presents various "documents" surrounding the 1972 assassination of activist Wael Zuaiter by Mossad agents in Rome as an absorbing artistic picture puzzle. At center stage are the letters of Zuaiter's friend, Sydney-born painter Janet Venn-Brown, who helps bring him to life for a film never shot in an art work that haunts the mind.
And Australians Louise Weaver, Rick Amor, Jan Senbergs and Jon Cattapan took part in a workshop at the Venice Printmaking Studio last month. Which brings the number of artisti to 11. —M.F.
