Arts Lab at Venice Biennale: gallery attendant to workshop leader, art consumer & possible poet
Thanks to a British Council fellowship award – funded jointly with the University of Bradford – Arts Lab’s Sara Downham-Lotto had the privilege of spending four full and busy weeks at the Venice Art Biennale 2024 this November.
Her time was spent fulfilling fellowship roles as both researcher and British Pavilion ambassador for John Akomfrah’s exhibition Listening All Night to the Rain; joining the masses in seeing as much art as possible at the 86 exhibitions in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the city centre of Venice; inspired by the romance of Venice, trying her hand at a bit of poetic writing.
By the somewhat grandiose term ‘British Pavilion Ambassador’, what we really mean is gallery attendant. To be fair, whilst the majority of their time as stewards was spent in hourly rotations, sitting or standing people-watching in one of Akomfrah’s Canto spaces – an activity Sara actually found really interesting – most were involved in the occasional Pavilion tour. The requirement to know their stuff kept them on their toes, and was a good opportunity to understand on a deeper level Akomfrah’s palpable oeuvre. With lots of time to think and reflect, Sara scribbled a few notes ……
‘What is it about our society in the Global North that makes us want to cram everything in? Queueing unimaginatively because everyone else is? Rushing to get through it all as if all connected by pace? What is it? FOMO? Social media? Does any of it really matter? Who stands to gain? It’s big business, sure, for the curators, the sponsors, the Biennale Box Office, the 1,500 or so restaurants in the area. What does the artist get out of it? A knighthood? (unless he/she already has one). And the sometime 5K visitors per day to the British Pavilion, crammed like sardines, shuffling in queues to see what everyone else sees without time to really look?
How many people from the Global South and diaspora are here? (Quoted from Akomfrah’s exhibition) “People of Colour”? 10-20 per 6K visitors, at a guess.
What will stay with us? What will we remember? The Aperol Spritz beside the canal watching the same-coloured sunset, or that conversation with the Dominican Republican selling ice cream?’
As part of her research – a highlight for Sara – she ran a series of participatory workshops outside the British Pavilion for exhibition visitors. Thanks to unseasonably dry and sunny weather, she was able to engage a significant proportion of curious art lovers. The project turned out to be a win-win-win: an opportunity for hands-on art making engagement for Biennale visitors, ordinarily only exposed to viewing other people’s art; an effective form of exhibition feedback and evaluation for British Pavilion staff; a chance for Sara to build her workshop experience with an entirely new demographic. With the resulting collaboratively-created artwork, Sara now has some interesting material to work with in her studio – a fourth win! To learn more about her project Friends Everywhere, follow the link >>>> .
Merging invisibly with the hoards of visitors – primarily Caucasian (warranting an important, separate discussion point) – Sara as art consumer, wandered at her own leisure around Venice’s art venues (with uncountable coffee breaks). Less impressed by the vibe of the ‘grander’ Giardini Pavilions, she was blown away by the Arsenale. If you’re interested, have a look at some of her top picks in the online Gallery -> ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ International Art Exhibition – Top Picks 1 and 2.
All in all, then a fruitful month, for which Sara is extremely grateful to the British Council and the University of Bradford. She leaves you with her wee poem –
To Venice …
….. to the two young women sprawled out in the autumn sun on the pavements of Riva San Biagio
….. to the Texan with the large glasses and loud, lipsticked mouth sharing her inner-most secrets in a busy restaurant
….. to the man who farts in his stride as he passes the queues to San Marco
…..to the woman who’s jiving to some house music video promoting indigenous American Indian culture
….. to the person who sticks the coloured paper with his comment “thinking outside the box” outside the picture borders at my workshop
….. to the one who made the first mark on the paper
….. to the solo Ukrainian crying her eyes out as she exits John Akomfrah’s intallation
….. to John Akomfrah for shaking up the world from its complacency
….. to the 16 year old who had the courage to unglue herself from the group and ask a question because she was OK with not understanding
….. to the one who found a space in the crowd, stood still, closed his eyes and listened
….. to the visitors whose eyes are still in their heads, and not through their phones
….. to those who remember to look and to feel, to laugh, cry and be
*
….. to the Bangladeshi grocery store front whose mandarin price tag changes daily according to tourist numbers. (One day 2.50 Euros for half a kilo; the next 2.95; the next 2.80. Yesterday – end of Biennale – it was 2.20)
….. to the silent, dark-skinned men
….. to the orange-yellow lights reflected in the water
….. to the 89 steps to the top of my building after another icecream
….. to the vermilion-lipsticked server in the Pasticceria Rizzardini (with the Obama poster showing through the kitchen doorway)
….. to the coffee
….. to the smiley, hi-vis-jacketted garbage collectors wheeling rectangular crates down the narrow lanes with centimetres to spare
….. to the Asian tac-sellers, tirelessly setting up and taking down their stalls with what-seems-to-me no more than a sale or two a day
….. to the tall and handsome gay couple ‘from London’ (he from Venice; he from Sunderland) in auntie’s tiny corner bookshop
….. to the said tiny shop with Ai Weiwei’s limited edition prints on the wall, celebrating Julian Assange and freedom of speech
….. to the young lads showing off in their motor boat, revving up before an abrupt end at the canal end
….. to the so-far-only-2 cats in a neighbourhood where their disappeared feline friends have been replaced by pooping lap-dogs
*
….. to the woman wearing socks with tits on
….. to the solitary pigeon who, every time the bakery door opens, ventures inside, grazing the floor for crumbs
….. to the solitary blackbird whose voice can be heard above the tourist clamour
