Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Various locations, Whitstable, Kent
3-18 June
Reviewed by: John Slyce
My experience of the Whitstable Biennale, constrained largely to its opening night, began while waiting for a coach to arrive and collect a shuffling gaggle of art world types in front of the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, East London. A little more than an hour and a half later we stepped off the coach and the performance events soon began. What followed over the next fourteen days was as much a festival of ambitious commissions, live art, film and video screenings and satellite programmes as the flowering of a sibling culture of support for elusive and complex art practices expressed through comradely gatherings, workshops and symposia.
Whitstable will never be the new Venice, Prague, São Paolo or even Liverpool and, to that extent, at least under the direction of Sue Jones, there is far less risk of ensuing fatigue. This is the third incarnation of the Whitstable Biennale and Jones, formerly of Chisenhale Gallery, has masterly guided and shaped an event that had its start as a somewhat sleepy showing of local artists’ production into a celebration of something much more, but still grounded in a locality and its community. Jones commissioned works and projects from Artlab, Charlotte Cullinan + Jeanine Richards, Anna Best, Simon Faithfull, Estelle Jourd, Matt Rudkin and Gary Stevens. Jeremy Millar created a screening programme and Sally O’Reilly joined Mel Brimfield to devise a schedule of performances always lively and often spontaneous. More than fifty artists officially took part in the 2006 Whitstable Biennale and that number would likely double if one took account of those who entered as participant observers. What follows is a fleeting sample of witnessed highlights.
Anna Best’s commission – for boats catching fish like journalists catch stories, for asylum seekers looking for haven³a work for Whitstable Harbour – took the form of mesmeric readings from local newspapers from the UK’s harbours and port towns on each of the three Biennale Sundays. Best’s entirely hypnotic hour-long readings charted a cycle of the use of land and sea from industry and labour to leisure and tourism repeated all along the coastline. Artlab (Cullinan + Richards) produced one of their finest works in a fusion of documentary material, extended fiction, personal histories and live performance. On 13th May 2006, Artlab took part in a track day organised for non-professional race car drivers at Lydden. The resulting Savage School Working Women’s Club Bar for the Shock Workers was installed in the grounds of Whitstable Castle: a sculpture/bar which mirrored the layout of the track became the support for an incidental film produced on race day and refracted by stills and sampled footage from Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Adam Chodzko, who now resides in Whitstable, gave a slide talk that wove myth and fact to produce a possible reading of his own work and practice that related still to the world outside. Two of the most lasting and perhaps significant contributions came from Gary Stevens and Simon Faithfull. Stevens led a week-long performance workshop centred on the piece Thought Bubble – itself a material example of Stevens’ practice of performance based on the development of improvisational and evolving structures. Simon Faithfull was commissioned to produce a book project titled ‘Lost’ – a catalogue of all the items he remembers to have lost and their circumstances: from his virginity and many palm pilots, to his parents. The project will be extended via www.simonfaithfull.org/lost where the life and travels of each book will be recorded. I am still holding and reading the copy I found during the opening, but I will let it go at the right time and in the right place.
Sue Jones is up for directing the next one with the continued support of the Arts Council and Canterbury Council. The site www.whitstablebiennale.com will be maintained between Biennales and contact can be made with the future director and organisers via info@whitstablebiennale.com. No slides please, but do feel free to register your interest and seat on next coach.
Writer detail:
John Slyce is a writer and critic based in London.
Venue detail:
Whitstable Biennale (The)
Project Office, 8 Royal Road, Ramsgate CT11 9LE
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