The 11th International Venice Architecture Biennale
Following Shane Murray and Nigel Bertram’s rigorous and earnest documentation of the contemporary Australian architectural condition with Macro Micro (2006), Abundant Australia took a deliberately visceral and democratic approach. The exhibition’s curators Neil Durbach, Vince Frost, Wendy Lewin, Kerstin Thompson and Gary Warner have applied a three part strategy: firstly leading the visitor through a re-orientated exterior landscape, secondly immersing the upper floor gallery with a “shimmering landscape of light”[1] before leading into the lower gallery to a “forest of architectural artefacts.”[2] The result is an aesthetically engaging exhibition – slickly managed, exceptionally well branded and undoubtedly successful in communicating a sense of exuberance and diversity within Australian architecture.
The approach, however, raises pertinent questions about the role of the curation within the design profession and provokes further commentary on the relationship between architecture and its exhibited manifestation as a political and persuasive form. By ‘fetishizing’ a particular aspect of architectural production – in this case the 'forest' of models, the creative directors straddled the uneasy line between engagement through objectification and a dilution of intent where the ability to understand the work in any depth is encumbered by a jewel-like display methodology and lack of accessible identifying information.
The curatorial strategy is not an issue within itself, however, within the context of what is essentially an architectural trade show such as Venice – with many competing and diverse messages – Abundant seems to suffer from a perceived lack of depth within the content on display, relying solely on a supporting discourse available through the beautifully produced yet hefty catalogue. Furthermore, by its very definition an International Architecture Biennale such as Venice attempts to provide an international ‘exposition’ or forum in order to demonstrate the actions and concerns of architects around the world and expose similarities and differences. While Director, Aaron Betsky’s “Out There: Beyond Building” provocation may have been announced late in the process, it seems a missed opportunity to simplify an engagement with the thematic beyond what appears as a post-rationalised strategy of asking the individual architects to “submit individual models for display”[3] asking them to “reflect on their own projects, reframing them as new thoughts and investigations”[4] in reaction to the overall theme.
The exhibition's production draws on the particular skills and expertise of each individual within the curatorial collaborative with success: Frost is effortlessly talented at branding and place making, Warner imbues the production with a clarity and dexterity and the architectural expertise borne from the power combination of Durbach, Lewin and Thompson provides a sophisticated and clever manipulation of Cox’s glaringly dated ‘temporary pavilion’. It appears that each creative director was given a task and succeeded, however as a cohesive message, the exhibition communicated in much the same way as the models inside: engaging in their own right but diluted with a passive curatorial voice. This attitude is reflective of what the Creative Director's suggest is the "democratic" or "studio" nature of the exhibition – a worthy objective in itself, yet as a result, Abundant is a beautiful, polite, egalitarian and comprehensive survey that misses the opportunity to question and explore the challenges for contemporary architecture at both a local and global level and move beyond a curatorial strategy embedded in fetishization to one of vital provocation.
Fleur Watson and Martyn Hook spoke to three of Abundant’s Creative Directors – Neil Durbach, Kerstin Thompson and Wendy Lewin[5] – about the genesis for their curatorial direction and their thoughts on future Australian architecture exhibitions in Venice.
Q: Can you briefly describe the curatorial remit for this year’s exhibition at the Australian pavilion?
Kerstin Thompson: I think it's interesting to think of the exhibition as a ‘snapshot’ or ‘sample’ of the past, the present and a potential future of Australian architecture so the result is a sample with a wide variation within the work on display. I think that tells us what contemporary practices are doing in Australia rather than just illustrating one possibility or an exclusive small number of practices. As a result there is a huge range and diversity of approach that’s reflective of what’s happening in Australia now.
Wendy Lewin: I think we were really interested in developing an exhibition that dealt with tactility, beauty, light, shadow and the collective rather than the individual – just as it is in architecture. A project in the city takes its place within a space made by other elements and, as things change and develop in the city, the context itself changes. The sort of exhibition we wanted to achieve was where the unexpected happens when one brings together a beautiful object or a collection of elements developed by one individual or practice that’s then set in relation to another, or others. The typography of the stands were designed to be quite idiosyncratic and without an order in the way we laid it out so there's that unexpected typography and relationship as well.
Q: One of the difficult aspects of exhibiting at the Venice Biennale is that the announcement of the overall thematic is – almost always – delayed so that, in many cases, the curators of the individual national pavilions have already consolidated their curatorial approach. Was that the reality for your team?
Neil Durbach: Obviously it's a super fast experience for everybody involved. I think that the overall the intention was actually to reduce the polemic… because the Biennale as a whole is incredibly dense with information and the rhetoric is kind of screeching... so, for us, it was important that we dealt with that context and accept that people didn't really have the time or the patience to treat the exhibition like a book. As a result I think we attempted to make it a visceral sort of exhibition and I think that, at that level, it's pretty successful and joyful – there's also no specific way of reading our show.
Q: I noted in another interview that you gave that you spoke at some length about the notion of beauty within this exhibition. In placing the models together as a mass installation and on plinths, without captions, it is arguable that the work is fetishized as objects first and architectural models second. Do you view them as objects rather than information and if so, was there any kind if distinction in your mind as to how they were placed within the exhibition?
Kerstin Thompson: I think the challenge lay in the fact that when we invited people to display models we had no idea what we would get from them so it was a massive risk. So returning to the idea of the sample again, we embraced the idea that we wouldn’t know what we would get from the individual practices – it's not something you can orchestrate beyond a certain point. So the way the work has been arranged ensures it work as a collection. If someone does scrutinize an individual piece then they have their own integrity and value as a single element but then it's also how they work as a collection so I think it shifts from a little fetishized object to a larger landscape illustrating current production. We felt it had to work in both ways, hence the arrangement of the pieces was really critical: How they worked together and in relationship to each other and the sorts of groupings that were determined. And on one level it is also the idea of having an exhibition with these very beautiful things that works very easily and viscerally for a diverse range of people… We hope that the exhibition experience is a pretty easy thing to immerse oneself in and then there’s the addition of the catalogue for the more detailed overlay – there’s a choice there and you’re not feeling like you’re missing out on the exhibition simply because you haven't bothered reading endless statements and grandiose claims about architecture.
Wendy Lewin: I think the democratization of the projects through the anonymity in which the work is displayed ensures there isn't any weighting of who’s done what. It becomes a real representation of people’s endeavours, rather than the perceived value of one against the other and that value being developed by someone’s particular understanding, and an architect’s relationship in the world to other architects. The exhibition always intended to be a studio approach so that what we exhibited would represent the endeavours of Australia as a studio, rather than developing an exhibition as a museum piece. If you look at it in relation to other exhibitions which are art installations or architecture blurred with theatre and drama, ours is not of that [strategy] – it's about the act of thinking and making and the impulses that drive projects… In its intention to be a studio rather than an exhibition, it does have that crafted quality, but also the element of investigation is apparent. We strived to emphasise the opportunity for investigation in our brief to the participating architects and I think it holds together very beautifully.
Q: With so many practices represented within the exhibition, do you feel there was a sensibility within the exhibition of some level of equality across Australian architectural practice?
Kerstin Thompson: I don't know if we saw it as that. I think we've always talked about it as more a ‘widening of the net’ so by taking a very large sample you can start to see different strands of thinking. In a way it is an invitation for the audience to look for the similarities in the works or the differences and requires a level of interaction from those that go through the exhibition to make something out of [the diverse array] of ‘stuff’… Actually, it’s one thing to be presenting the work to the world, and, of course, that’s a huge part of the purpose of the exhibition yet another part of it is that this has created a really interesting network within Australia itself. There have been a lot of people involved in and connected to the exhibition and so I think it’s a process that has strengthened the architectural culture within Australia, which is a really important gesture within the context of a Biennale.
Q: It seems that this exhibition deliberately takes a very different approach to Macro Micro (2006) which had a more discourse based curatorial approach and, arguably, a more localised, urban perspective. What does Abundant offer to Australia and the international community as a whole? Do you think feel it perhaps breaks down some of those romantic notions of what Australian architecture is while, at the same, time engaging through imagery and beauty?
Neil Durbach: There has always been that sort of stranglehold image – especially in the international media – that Australian architecture was just a handful of people doing beautiful buildings in the bush and many of the more confident, larger-scale works were actually suppressed behind that powerful image. I think that the last exhibition, Macro Micro tried to foreground the more complex, [urban] projects but I think that what we're trying to build is a sense of confidence for the Australian architecture community as a whole. We should feel confident! I’ve looked around at the range of exhibitions here and I'm amazingly confident about the work being produced in Australia – I think it's as good as anything being produced elsewhere.
Kerstin Thompson: Yes, I think one of the pitfalls of big international exhibitions is that there's a particular framework that’s set with which each country is measured against. I sometimes question how relevant are an international set of standards and, as a result, I think the mistake we can make is to say: “Oh well, we weren't quite up to it.” Actually, I think the individual exhibitions have their own integrity and a very complex and interesting set of conditions that are valuable in and of themselves… how useful it is to say: “Well is it like France or not?” I don’t think it’s always the best way to understand.
Q: The architectural exhibition is a burgeoning area of contemporary curatorial practice. How do you view the mediation process of exhibiting a representation of architecture and is it easy for you to separate the architecture from the act of exhibiting architecture?
Neil Durbach: Generally we treat it as another complete architectural project from the system that the models were to be displayed on – these little sort of lily pads – all the way through to devising the actual arrangement of the models, so it's all a way of displaying thoughts or communicating information and getting a certain atmosphere.
Kerstin Thompson: It’s also, ultimately, a spatial experience through the transformation of the pavilion that is radically different to how it has been used in the past. As architectural proposition I think there has been a really good series of moves [in reworking the pavilion] and then within the exhibition experience itself.
Q: Now that Abundant has opened and you've had a few days to look around the rest of the Biennale, what do you see as the next challenge for the Australian pavilion in two years time where you feel there is a gap to be filled or an ambition to grow beyond what you've created here?
Kerstin Thompson: I think it’s natural to react politically [to each former approach] so in trying to anticipate the reaction to this exhibition we might see a move back to singularity next because we've gone for so much diversity and such a wide range here. I think there’s linearity where one show sets up what the next one might be.
Neil Durbach: it's interesting looking at all the exhibitions because, for instance, the Japanese pavilion is essentially just about the work of one person, the Belgian pavilion is essentially about an idea or concept, and the Australian, in contrast, seems to be about this sort of huge range of architects and diversity of work. It's true that the next one will probably take a completely different approach.
Wendy Lewin: “I think the exhibition has identified the richness of practice in Australia which I think, for us, was important to have achieved. The interest in our productive capacity has also been identified and that's very useful. The exhibition might also open up the coverage and discussion that certain media give architects generally, and it might also open up potential for governments or other institutions, or individuals to support architecture – not just as [an industry] but as culturally significant and valued and important to our culture. I'm not sure how that would manifest itself in future exhibitions, but there may be ways of moving that forward. Ultimately, greater support [for exhibiting and communicating architecture] is something that we would hope to come out of this exhibition.
[1] Catalogue essay, Abundant: Australian Exhibition at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia, Australian Institute of Architects, 2008. p. 7.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Neil Durbach and Kerstin Thompson were interviewed together and Wendy Lewin interviewed separately on site at the Australian pavilion. September 13, 2008.
Image Credits
1. Creative director Kerstin Thompson with 'Faberge Football' model by Lyons,
Australian Pavilion Venice Architecture Biennale 2008
Photographer: Peter Hyatt
Source: Australian Institute of Architects
2. Creative directors Wendy Lewin and Neil Durbach with models,
Australian Pavilion Venice Architecture Biennale 2008
Photographer: Brett Boardman
Source: Australian Institute of Architects
Biographies
Fleur Watson is writer, curator and the former editor of MONUMENT magazine (2001 – 2007). She recently completed an MA in Curating Contemporary Design at the Design Museum and Kingston University and has established something together, a cross disciplinary studio that is focused on collaborative design partnerships and communication through exhibitions and publications.
Martyn Hook is Course Leader of the Architecture Program at RMIT and Director of iredale pedersen hook architects. He was former Associate Editor of MONUMENT magazine and has written and lectured widely about Australian architecture and design for 10 years.
16 April 2009