18th Biennale of Sydney

all our relations 

27 June – 16 September 2012

Artistic Directors: Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster

Major venues for the 18th Biennale of Sydney include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Pier 2/3 and Cockatoo Island, with other venues to be announced.

Working from a collaborative framework, ‘all our relations’ will be a departure from previous Biennale of Sydney exhibitions, with the theme becoming increasingly apparent through the process rather than being imposed on artists and audiences at the beginning.

De Zegher and McMaster said: ‘Drawing on the possibility of the present, the Biennale will emerge from the engagement of all participants by using a model that begins with two curators in dialogue. A changing reality is apparent in a renewed attention to how things connect, how we relate to each other and to the world we inhabit. Rather than one work appearing to link to one or two other works, projects will correspond as if evolving from each other and progressing through the sequence of venues and buildings.

Artists will work in a context that allows for mutual recognition and audiences from differing backgrounds will be part of this continual development. The collaboration will take place on many different levels: in co-existence, conversation and juxtaposition but also in purposeful connectivity. Artists, who can often feel isolated in their practice, will come together with neighbouring artists. This interconnection and interdependency will occur in the knowledge that audiences, too, will take elements from the exhibition and connect them with their own experiences.’