Biennale at last

I've been plotting to get to the Venice Biennale for many years, and I have certainly not been disappointed. It is amazing. It consists of exhibitions in two areas, the Arsenale and the Giardini, with overall curation of the participants by one person, and these areas also contain permanent pavilions of a number of countries. You pay for this - a day pass which gives entry into each of those venues is 20 euros, not expensive for what you get. Alongside this many countries send an exhibition of their own and have to find a venue within Venice for this. NZ is one of those countries. Entry into these exhibitions is free and they are dotted all over Venice (which is a big area). So I got my ticket and was waiting for the doors to open at 10am.

It wasn't too crowded. I started in the Arsenale, where the exhibits are set in a number of huge warehouses around a body of water.

These curated exhibitions were representing individual countries. Needless to say, I took hundreds of pictures and will just put a few here.

Cindy Sherman, photographic, bigger than life-size. The Swiss pavilion was very strange, a big exhibition of sort of wrapped up junk and objects.

The American pavilion had a huge upside tank outside - interesting enough, but then the tracks suddenly ground into motion with a man running on a treadmill on top of one of them. Many metaphors to be drawn there.

The Chinese pavilion was interesting, lots of heavy machinery and some ceramics and a long tunnel lined with beautiful pen and ink scenes

I thought the Italian pavilion was probably the best - it had the most painting in it and quite a lot of sculpture. These was so much I liked in it.

The Giardini is much more open with lots of trees and lawns and is very pleasant and generally cooler.

I managed to stay upright until about 5.30pm (it closes at 6pm) and had a glass of sparkling wine to give me enough energy for the hour long hot walk back to the station. I was surprised to see a big cruise ship glide past, but even more surprised this morning to see one twice as big in the dock right by the Biennale site. I'm glad I went yesterday. There was wave after wave of people from the ship pouring into Venice armed with headphones and guides. Damn tourists.