Dark presence: Fiona Hall exhibition inaugurates new Australian Pavilion

Denton Corker Marshall's Australian Pavilion reads as a "black box" in the Venice Biennale's Giardinni.

Denton Corker Marshall’s Australian Pavilion reads as a “black box” in the Venice Biennale’s Giardinni.

Image: John Gollings

This past week saw the launch of the 56th Venice Biennale and with it the opening of the new Australian Pavilion in the Biennale’s Giardinni. Designed by Denton Corker Marshall (DCM), the pavilion is a two level concrete and steel structure clad in black granite and has been described by the Australia Council for the Arts as the first 21st century pavilion to be built in the precinct.

Fiona Hall was the artist chosen to exhibit for the new pavilion’s inaugural year. Hall, who began her artistic career as a photographer in the 1970s, is perhaps best known for her erotically-charged sardine can sculptures. Her work typically engages with themes of history, ecology, and the effects of globalization and this year’s exhibition, entitled Wrong Way Time, is no different.

As Hall has said of the exhibition, “My three main agendas were global conflict, global finances, and the environment, and some of the local and global issues there. And with these three agendas, my stance, my direction, particularly given the title ‘Wrong Way Time,’ has been to look at the madness, badness and sadness that seems to permeate so much of our world today.”

Wrong Way Time has already drawn high praise, with Laura Cumming ranking it in The Observer as one of the top five installations at the 2015 Biennale. As Cumming writes, “Fiona Hall’s wunderkammer of glimmering objects in the brand new Australian pavilion […] shows her extraordinary gift for juxtaposing ideas and materials – guns made out of bread, watercolours out of banknotes, a bestiary of imaginary critters woven from the grasses where they might live.”

Fiona Hall's Wrong Way Time exhibition is a reflection on the "madness, badness and sadness" that permeates our world today.

Fiona Hall’s Wrong Way Time exhibition is a reflection on the “madness, badness and sadness” that permeates our world today.

Image: John Gollings

Actor Cate Blanchett officially opened the new pavilion on behalf of the more than 80 donors who made the building possible by contributing $6.5 million of the $7.5 million construction costs. Australian Commissioner Simon Mordant, who himself contributed $2 million towards the project with his wife Catriona Mordant, said of the DCM design at the opening, “We asked for a building that was distinctive…durable, resilient, and breathtakingly simple. It was key that artists could claim the space. The architects have delivered this brief perfectly.”

DCM designed the pavilion as a “white box within a black box”– a white-box presumably being understood as the optimum vessel for the containment and display of artists’ works. Ironically, though, in its first outing as a for the Hall and exhibition curator Linda Michael have opted to break with tradition and paint the white box dark, lending the venue the moody, chiaroscuro drama of a natural history museum.

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