Biennale Of Sydney- Cockatoo Island

The 21st Biennale of Sydney is currently occurring across multiple sites in Sydney. The theme SUPERPOSTION: Equilibrium & Engagement gives attendees a way to view these pieces and how they reflect current issues in the world. Mary and I took a ferry out to Cockatoo Island today, which is one of the locations for the Biennale. Cockatoo Island is a UNESCO World Heritage listed site that was a former convict prison in the 1800s and then a naval shipyard until its closure in 1991.

Artworks were spread across different precincts on the island. Our first stop was the Industrial Precinct, which contained a few of my favorite works. Austrian artist Martin Walde's piece Timeline explores the passing of time, with a sheet of paper being shot out from a printer up in the rafters every six minutes containing a calendar date that started with the opening of the exhibition and ending in 2071. Each paper floats onto the floor, and some of them have drawings or writing from the artist in addition to the printed date.

The focus of the pieces by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at Cockatoo Island is refugees. Law of the Journey is a 60-metre long raft filled with people that is made out of black rubber. There is also wallpaper made of photos taken while he was filming the documentary Human Flow, as well as four different video works that were made in the past couple years to focus on the refugee crisis.

Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio's piece Beautiful Minds uses a programmed 3D printer loaded with clay to recreate the sedimentary rock formations of Devil's Tower, also known as Bear Lodge Butte in Wyoming.

Thai artist Mit Jai Inn has a few large scale installations with Planes (Hover, Erupt, Erode) which involves the use of paint in different forms.

In the Ship Design Precinct were two interesting video installations. Lebanese-Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi's audio-visual piece Bring The Silence depicts video on five different screens of people offering their respects to the Sufi saint Muhammad Nizamuddin Auliya at a sacred burial site. The floor of the room was covered in rugs and the scent of rosewater filled the air.

American artist Suzanne Lacy's multi-part audio-visual installation The Circle and the Square is the culmination of the two-year project Shapes of Water - Sounds of Hope in the town of Pendle, Lancashire. Residents came together in a closed down textile mill to sing choral music and do Sufi chanting. The sound of the choir singing rounds filled the room, and there were also individual interviews with local residents that you could listen to.

The Biennale of Sydney is on for a couple more weeks, closing on Monday, 11 June 2018.