Wrapping Up

The Biennale is coming to a close this week, and with it, my internship. Having been involved in some way since November, it feels like a long relationship! But I've had a great time, had some awesome experiences, and met some great people. As a way of ending my Masters degree, this has felt like the perfect wrap up - using many of the skills acquired during the degree, gaining some industry experience, and probably the best thing about the degree.

What began as fortnightly seminars about the theme of the Biennale and the artists, including some research of my own, turned into helping out however I could in the office, writing education material, a crazy opening week, then weekly tours on the island. In terms of variety, I couldn't ask for more.

The tours have definitely been one of the highlights. I discovered a passion for talking about works I loved, introducing people to new concepts, watching their engagement with works, and interacting with people interested in similar things as me. And I suppose I can forgive those people who drove me nuts - all part of the package!

The opportunity to interact with artists and industry professionals was amazing. I learnt so much just being in the same room as some of the curators and critics, while airport pickups and drinks with artists was certainly an experience I won't soon forget!

I would like to thank Nisa and Dougal for their support during the Biennale, and their guidance through the ups and downs, and letting us interns get in on the action. Thank you to my fellow interns, and the other tour guides, for making this internship worthwhile and so much fun. I shall miss the Biennale, but am looking forward to what comes next!

Gitter Station for Kids Days

For three Saturdays in July, the Biennale is holding Kids Days on Cockatoo Island. Armed with a map of 'Prison Island', hoards of screaming children follow a route that leads them around the island. They begin by making an origami hat outside the old Military Guard House on the top of the island, along to the Glitter Station (where I was for Day One) where the kids make glitter glue paintings that link to Reuben Patterson's gorgeous glitter works, down to the Turbine Hall for some blow painting next to Cai Guo-Qiang's exploding cars, then back towards the ferry to collect a balloon on the way out.

I can't say much for the other stations, but glittering is a messy business. Armed with glitter glue and a stencil, the kids were able to make images of cockatoos, leaves, moons and suns, then add more loose glitter on top. Now since some kids don't know the meaning of 'STOP' when it comes to pouring out glue, and the loose glitter had to be applied by shaking the bottle that had a hole in the top, plus it was super windy, it was basically glitter everywhere!!

But the kids enjoyed it, and some of them were hilarious. Like the 8yr old boy who had counted each spoke on the sun wheel, and carefully explained to his sister how many spokes should be of one colour in order that no colour be repeated; or one of the Louis Vitton-clad twin girls who declared to her father, 'No Daddy, I am going to do one more!'

So maybe I will be moved to the blow-painting next week or the hats next week? Let's just hope that it is just as sunny, with less wind, and I am definitely wearing my 'getting messy' clothes!

Guiding Tours on Cockatoo Island

Part of my internship involves taking tours around Cockatoo Island. Since November last year, several COFA students have been taking seminars on the biennale and its themes, doing research on individual artists and giving speeches to the class as prep for the tours. We also used the research to write some of the educational material, like the student newspaper and teacher info kits.

The tours started the first week of the biennale, with anywhere up to 20+ people. It is a little nerve wracking talking to that many people, but after a while you get pretty confident. There is the occasional person that drives you nuts, but most of the people have been really lovely. It's so good to get a group that really wants to get involved and asks questions, trying to get the most from the tour. And often you learn things from them, or have some people with incredible experiences - like the woman who had worked in a shanty town in Cape Town so was really interested by Kadar Attia's work, or people who had relatives who worked on the island in its heyday, and its great to see people inspired by the works.

And then you get the ones who ask the tough questions, my fave was today - so what makes an artist an artist and their work a piece of art? Ahhhh...... definitely keeps me on my toes!

Opening Week Wrap Up

Sorry for the delay in my follow up to Opening Week - after running around like a crazy person for 10 days, I got tonsillitis so have been trying to recover (oh, and write 3 essays....)!

Opening Week: around 10 days of madness! Meeting artists, parties, jumping on and off ferries, artist performances, artist talks, forums... Such an incredible experience! I think around 120 artists/curators came into Sydney for the week from all over the world, so for me, it was enough to just be in the same space as all of these amazingly talented people and hear their take on the world!

One of the highlights was the Opening Week Forum. Day 2 included discussions on Indigenous issues in the arts, with speakers from New Zealand, Canada and Mexico; a panel of curators that included David Elliot, James Putnam (a curator at the British Museum), David A. Bailey (from the International Curators Forum), Simon Njami (from Paris) and Hu Fang (Vitamin Creative Space). Listening to them bounce ideas off each other was really inspiring. Not necessarily to be a curator, but to have that passion about what you do. Then there was the Nick Waterlow Memorial Lecture given by Lawrence Weschler, another inspiring speaker. His discussion on Vermeer, the Dutch wars in the 1660s and the Bosnian-Serbian conflict in the 1990s was really powerful - when they make the taping available, it is definitely worth watching!

Having survived the dramas, the exhibition is now up and running. If you decide to head out to Cockatoo Island, you may just run into me giving free guided tours!

Opening Week Update

So it is Monday of opening week and I am already tired! It really started for me last Wednesday, with...

Office work - last minute paperwork, finalisations etc

Airport pickups - picking up artists from the airport. Let's just say that being at the airport at 6am on a Saturday morning, surrounded by hundreds of people, holding a sign, searching for someone you have no idea what they look like, is not one of the best things about this job. But so far, the artists have been lovely - even after 20hr flights - and have just been grateful to have someone meet them and take them to their hotel. Its been a great experience to meet all of these people, and I think if someone can be lovely at 6am, after an hour and a half in customs, they've got to be alright!

Random driving excursions - driving a hire car is fun, though it took a bit to get used to a new car. Trip to Bing Lee? Sure. Bondi Junction? No problem. Bunnings? Yep. Drive to the airport, pick up an artist, drop them off at their hotel in the city, without getting lost? Maybe?

Oh, and of course, the parties - the best bit! So far Cockatoo Island and the Roslyn Oxley Gallery, with more to come. It's a little nerve-racking, meeting all these new people, but after the initial, 'Hi, I'm Kate' (added, of course, with the blessing/curse of these things, free alcohol) you end up with some great conversations (Seinfeld-Confucius-Planet Earth Geological Society...)!

And 6 more days of opening week to go.....

Opening Week Hectic-ness

Just got told today what my schedule is for opening week (well plus about 5 days before hand) - my reaction: 'ahhhhh!!!!'

It sounds like it will be amazing - parties, networking, meeting some pretty famous people. But oh my god will I be tired. There are three of us interning with the public programs and education department and we will be running around like crazy. I believe on one day I will be organising artists to be in the right place, sitting on a bus with international curators, heading to the Art Gallery of NSW, then Pier 2/3 for a party, then onto Cockatoo Island for another party. And that is just one day! I may need to sleep in the Biennale office that week, so I don't waste time on transport getting there!

I am looking forward to it - any nervousness about meeting and greeting these people will, I am sure, be gone very quickly once it gets up to speed, and of course, social lubricant provided at these parties always helps!

Look forward to some very interesting stories once the week begins...

The joys of envelope stuffing

When you think interning, there are three menial jobs that come to mind: getting coffee, photocopying, and mail outs.

Now, fortunately, I have not had to do much, if any, of the first two. Today, however, was the first massive mail out that required major amounts of envelope stuffing. The Biennale starts in a couple of weeks, so invites to opening week events needed to be sent out. Now I assumed that there would be alot of mail involved, but today 20 000 invites were packed, to be sent out to over 3000 people! And this was only to the people that RSVP'd and doesn't include the benefactors or ambassadors of the Biennale. So wow!

I was doing the international list and it really gives you an idea of just how far an event of this type reaches. Places I had guessed - New Zealand, the UK, North America, Europe, parts of Africa. But Lorestan and the Kyrgyz Republic?? Sorry, where?? (I googled it - Lorestan is in Western Iran and the Kyrgyz Republic is in Central Asia, bordered by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China - if that helps! Learning a bit of geography too!)

It's great to think that so many countries get involved (even if it did mean my list for invites was 35 A3 pages!), giving the Biennale a real international flavour and bringing a whole range of knowledge and experiences to the table.

Conquering my fear of the phone!

I have a fear of using the phone! I know that sounds pretty silly in this day and age but it makes me nervous having to call people. I am ok answering phones, but having to make the call... I am always worried I will say the wrong thing, or that I will be asked a question I don't know the answer to, or that I will start babbling. Generally, the way I get over it is to remember to breathe and try to tell myself that it really isn't life threatening, and then I usually write myself a script in an attempt to limit the babbling!

So the other day in the office, I had to make multiple phone calls to restaurants in order to get a quote for holding a dinner. So I was a little nervous. I had my script at the ready, took a deep breathe and dialed the first number. And guess what... it went fine! Sorry to not give you any embarrassing stories but there was only limited babbling and no major problems. Throughout the day there were one or two close calls when I was asked a question I didn't know the answer to, but I got very good at deflection!

So I feel like a proper grown up, and am very proud of myself - maybe next time, I won't need a script!

...well, maybe just in case...

Artist Talk with David Elliot and artists

As part of being an intern, we have to do a lot of random things, including helping to put out chairs for artists talks. Now carrying 70 chairs from one level to another and setting them out, and then taking them back upstairs, is not the most exciting thing in the world, nor is it great for your back! However, we did get to sit and listen to the talk and that is one of the bonuses of this job.

David Elliot was chatting to Newell Harry, Mikela Dwyer and Warren Fahey about their practice and their specific works for this year's Biennale. It was a chance to hear Elliot speak for the first time (and he's good to listen to, a pretty switched on bloke!) and to learn a little more about a couple of the artists. Helpful, as eventually, I will need to be leading tours around these artworks!

For me, the most interesting part of the talk was the discussion about invoking the spirits of Cockatoo Island. Fahey, a musicologist and collector of folk music (a connection to Harry Everett Smith, the patron saint of the BoS, who was, among other things, also a musicologist and collector of folk music!) is collating the ballads of people who would have worked on the island. By playing the music alongside images of those same people, he hopes to give the audience almost a presence of those lost souls. But Dwyer is hoping for a step further. She is hoping to actually call forth the ghosts of those lost souls. By playing a soundtrack of someone chipping away at sandstone blocks (one of the main activities on the island), she hopes that the ghosts will remember the sound and that their spirits will return to the Island.

Now this sounds a bit wacky, but the idea is kinda fun, pretty different, and imagine if it worked......

Pecha Kucha

Every Thursday night throughout the Biennale (preview on Sunday 16th May) Artspace will host PechaKucha Thursdays - what sounds like an awesome and fun evening that I can't wait for!

Pronouned 'pe-chak-cha', its Japanese for the sound of 'chit-chat' and the concept is that anyone can stand up and show the room their latest creative work, project, or anything they like really. The catch is that you have to talk to 20 slides of your choosing, but you only have 20 seconds a slide. Beginning in 2003 in Tokyo by a couple of architects as an opportunity for young designers to show their work and network, it has turned into a worldwide phenomenon (280 cities worldwide hold events!) where anyone can get up and tell the world their story.

Some of the topics are bizarre and some are hilarious, but their website www.pecha-kucha.org is well worth a look and come along Thursday nights during the Biennale to see what Sydney has to offer!

Website Link

The website for the Biennale is pretty cool and offers up heaps of info about what's on, the artists, the venues, the curator, the theme (there is alot going on with the theme but its super interesting!).

www.bos17.com/
(just click on the phrase 'website link' and it will take you straight there!)

Well worth a look!

Who am I and what am I doing?

My name is Kate, and I am currently in my final semester of my Masters of Art Administration. This blog is part of the internship component of my course, so expect weekly updates on what's happening with me. My internship is at the Biennale of Sydney, a major international art exhibition held every two years. I'm pretty excited about it actually, and so far, hearing about a few artists and what goes into setting up an exhibition has been quite educational and I'm looking forward to learning more. So stay tuned for more on the Biennale...