Aussie Wendell

I went to the Biennale of Sydney this past weekend..."Australia's largest and most exciting international festival of contemporary art." I thought I'd try and find some culture, which is somewhat hard to do here. I guess when you've lived in New York for 11 years, you get a little spoiled; art and culture is all around you... a living, breathing presence in New York...kind of like taxis...they're always there when you need them (except between 4-6 PM or after a Broadway show). You might have to hold your arm out a little longer here to get a taxi, I mean culture, but it can be found in the form of an occasional independent film or art festival if you wait long enough.

Anyway, while the festival was/is filled with the usual "contemporary," and "interpretive" pieces (e.g. things that I could assemble using things from my rubbish bin), there was one artist who definitely caught my attention; Antony Gormley. His "Asian Field," exhibit was/is an installation of 180,000 hand-sized clay figurines assembled by three hundred and fifty villagers in southern China in just five days. The figurines form a vast sea of almost featureless bodies stare at you with blank holes for eyes.
As Gormley says, "The art is not there to be looked at; it is looking at you."


I took some photos of the sea of real people who created the clay features and one of the exhibit itself...I got yelled at, as you're not supposed to take pictures, so I included a few from a local newspaper article.

Next stop, the Sydney Film Festival!