Artlink Executive Editor Stephanie Britton 'did' two major art fairs in our region, the first ever in Hong Kong - ART HK08 and the fifth Beijing one - CIGE (China International Gallery Exposition). She found them both fascinating and especially enjoyed the Mapping Asia and Alternative Energy sections of CIGE and the symposium organised by Asia Art Archive at HK08.
Curator of the 2008 Adelaide Biennale Felicity Fenner discriminates between site-specific and site-responsive art practices in an analysis of the last two Singapore Biennales. She suggests that responding to the site may be the best way for a biennale to become more than an expo.
Marcus Westbury, former director of Noise, Next Wave, TINA (This Is Not Art) festivals, and writer and presenter of Not Quite Art on ABC TV, writes about the need for art to get away from reflecting too hard on gatekeepers and their requirements. He looks at the Biennale of Sydney at Cockatoo Island, the Next Wave's The Containers Village and the Melbourne Laneways projects as good examples of stepping outside the cube. He concludes that: 'Artists are best to invest their energy in finding their audiences and their communities.'
London-based Macedonian artist and writer Nadja Prlja compares the urban and modern 5th Berlin Biennial BB5: When Things Cast No Shadow (5 April - 15 June 2008) with Manifesta 7 (19 July - 2 November 2008) which occupied the whole arae of Trentoni in Italy. Prlja pays particular attention to the differences in the ways the projects were curated.
Outgoing Director of the Experimental Art Foundation Melentie Pandilovksi spills the beans on the current state of play internationally in terms of powerful independent curators moving into important positions in museums. He puts forward the prevalence of a 'new institutionalism' seeking to redefine contemporary art institutions from within. The EAF is about to release a Futures paper on this topic.
In September 2008 Dylan Rainforth went to both the 7th Shanghai Biennale (Translocalmotion) and the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (Farewell to Post-Colonialism). While he found mixed messages in Shanghai which was curated by artistic director Zhang Qing assisted by Julian Heynen and Henk Slager, it was Guangzhou curated by Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj and Johnson Chang that hit the sweet spot with 'witty, people-powered ways forward.'
Professor and artist Pat Hoffie interviewed highly creative, innovative and idiosyncratic curator Kevin Wilson, once Director of Linden, Director at Noosa Gallery where he devised The Floating Land project and most recently Program Director with the Queensland Artworkers Alliance and their ARC Biennial that opens in October 2009.