Look at me, look at me

By JOSIE McNAUGHT

The 50th Venice Biennale is being hailed as the biggest yet, with around 600 artists participating in hundreds of exhibitions. It's also earned the unofficial title of grumpiest Biennale from veterans because of the unseasonably humid weather.

Venice might be one of the most romantic and captivating cities in the world, but try trudging around its labyrinth of alleys, or squeezing on to a crowded vaporetto public transport boat in soggy, 35C heat, and some of the charm starts to wear off.

So no wonder everyone's a tad grumpy - but the good news is it's not the art they are grumbling over. The feedback for New Zealand's exhibition, This is the Trekka, has been positive, regardless of how artist Michael Stevenson's complex mix of social, economic and art history is understood by every visitor to the show. Stevenson has parked a restored Trekka car in La Maddalena, an 18th-century church, and surrounded it with a "butter mountain" of ex-NZ Dairy Board butter cartons and the Moniac, a hydraulic computer designed by New Zealand economist W.A. Phillips.

The exhibition is a much more multifaceted show than this brief description suggests, because Stevenson combines these and other disparate elements into a unifying plot tracing New Zealand's own Cold War story and struggle to remain relevant in the face of globalisation.

The Biennale itself is a reflection of the issues Stevenson is exploring.

As one of the newest and smallest countries to attend the Biennale, New Zealand fights for audience, media and critical attention with the big guns who have been coming for years - the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Germany and Japan. Even Australia is coming up to its 20th anniversary at the Biennale.

It's not only Stevenson's installation that is unique: New Zealand's approach to the organisation reflects the "Kiwi" way (and the tight budget). So Creative New Zealand chairman Peter Biggs was able to detour to Venice from other business in Europe and then spent days handing out leaflets and Trekka postcards, while CNZ chief executive Elizabeth Kerr donned a black (of course) Trekka T-shirt and worked behind the counter at the exhibition.

Building on New Zealand's first visit to the Biennale in 2001 has been a priority for this Creative New Zealand initiative. In her report on New Zealand's participation in 2001, Kerr noted that just getting there should be considered a success in itself, given the scale and complexity of the undertaking. CNZ's commitment runs to another appearance in 2005, but no decisions have been made on whether funding, now $500,000 a Biennale, will be extended.

"We're an organisation that makes choices and we weigh up the value of those choices. When we made the decision to come, all the advice we got was that we had to be there because it was such a major platform," she says.

Kerr attended the Biennale in 2001 and she says people know about New Zealand this time. "At other exhibitions and openings I've attended people are aware of New Zealand's presence and are very interested. Most people I spoke to had been or were intending to come and commented very favourably. By returning in 2003 we've increased our contacts and profile."

Whether New Zealand arts would get a bigger bang for their buck if CNZ abandoned the Biennale is a moot point. Given some of the grumbling about the money involved, you could be forgiven for thinking it was CNZ's only project.

"This is a big project, and it was initiated by CNZ, but we put funding into lots of other arts projects - both local and international across the whole sector."

For its participants, Venice is the only Biennale (and there is a growing list of them happening around the world) that assures a large audience of curators, directors and enthusiastic art fiends. But quantifying the benefits to New Zealand art after only two attendances is difficult.

Measuring New Zealand's cultural profile isn't as easy as totalling up visitor numbers and logging media coverage. The participating artists in 2001, Jacqueline Fraser and Peter Robinson, were offered opportunities to exhibit internationally as a direct result of being in Venice.

Fraser says her profile at Roslyn Oxley Gallery, her Sydney dealer, was raised among Australian collectors and curators who had seen her show in Venice.

"Most of these people were only vaguely aware of my work before, but they came especially to my opening to tell me how much they liked my work."

Robinson also found that international directors and curators became familiar with his work, but only because they had seen it in Venice. He was included in an exhibition in Dublin, invited to teach for a week at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Art and two of his pieces from Venice were in a subsequent show, Iconoclash, at the ZKM in Karlsruhe.

Darren Knight, Stevenson's dealer in Australia for the past 10 years, has made the trip to Venice - the first time he's attended the Biennale.

"I always said that I'd come to Venice when I had an artist showing, but I'm really interested to see how it all works."

Knight said the benefits for Stevenson were already apparent, with an offer of a show in Iran on the table.

At the New Zealand press conference on day three of the exhibition, Stevenson was exhausted, but rallied for the all-important schmoozing with the international media, including Frieze and Art Forum magazines.

"I'm pleased with how the show has been received so far and I think we've been able to use this space quite well," says Stevenson.

Going to Venice should provide Stevenson with his passport to the international "Venice club" - but it will remain a rather exclusive membership for New Zealand artists, unless a long-term commitment can be made beyond 2005. Equally, the benefit of attending Venice does have an effect on the wider visual arts sector. By our being there, an international awareness of the level of contemporary practice in New Zealand is created.

Venice might sound like one big art opening, but the opportunity to network and meet curators and directors from around the world at the Vernissage (Biennale preview) simply isn't available to New Zealand any other way. If New Zealand wants to attract this group - and there's no doubt New Zealanders rather like the world looking at and admiring them - then Venice it has to be. After all, the Film Commission has been fronting up in Cannes, networking and building relationships, for years - whether or not they have films to flog.

There is an international audience and market for New Zealand art - the question is whether New Zealand's continued presence at Venice will enhance opportunities to tap into that audience on a long-term basis - and that involves a long-term commitment to the event. New Zealand's profile at Venice will build gradually, but as Australian Art Monthly noted in its November 2001 issue: "NZ have committed themselves to participating in the next two Biennales and the impact of this dynamic combination of artists has created a strong statement resolutely placing New Zealand on the international arts map."

* Josie McNaught travelled to the Venice Biennale courtesy of Cathay Pacific.