REDFERN: An initiative of Damien Minton Gallery, the inaugural Redfern Biennale was held on Saturday March 8, from 11am to 6pm. The outdoor, eclectic, democratic free-for-all happening was a highlight of Art Month Sydney and a huge success.
More than 60 artists agreed to place artwork on the streets of Redfern – in and around the public housing precinct. Art lovers assembled at Damien Minton Gallery (583 Elizabeth Street) and collected a Biennale guide, which listed many of the artworks on exhibit.
We discovered readymade art, sculptures, multimedia and new media works, paintings, posters and found objects on the street.
Standouts included Chico Monks’ Colourful Faces of Redfern [see detail on front-page banner], Chris Mansell’s typographic work, Wholesale European, Camo’s Banksy-inspired stencil artwork [pictured], Sara Givins’ beautiful yellow wool tree installation, Blake Kendall’s assemblage, I Remember She Ironed, Staci Crutchfield, Brett Stone and Sally Cooper’s clay work, Redfern Midden, Stephen Coburn’s Boat Cave (a metal sculpture featuring life-size fruit bats), and Hugh Ramage’s sculpture, Titan.
The Blak Douglas stenciled the word “visitors” on the road at the corner of Cooper and Walker streets, a graphic reminder of the colonial occupation of Indigenous land. Blak said: “Damien Minton Gallery has demonstrated once again unique ingenuity when it comes to outstanding community-based art exhibitions.”
The notion of the one-day event stemmed from Damien Minton photographing detritus around the streets of Redfern and posting images on social media with art references. The Biennale was also a great excuse to walk the streets and mix with neighbours and art enthusiasts. The weather was perfect – crisp, sunny. We kept looking for more art – and the more we looked, the more many ordinary objects seemed like art!
The Biennale also paid homage to the American artist Mike Kelley. His cacophonous, disorientating agglomerations, sprawling installations of stuff heaped upon other stuff, was described by art critic Jerry Saltz in the Village Voice 2005, as a pioneering example of “clusterfuck aesthetics”.
In a specially commissioned essay by the internationally regarded Belgian art and culture theorist, Yellam Nre, we read: “… Redfern Biennale is a shot across the bow of government sanctioned social sculpture for the greater good. It places public art back in the hands of the public, where they are free to ‘engage’ with it as they wish. The utopian desire, imagined or otherwise, of a multifarious yet united society is thus enacted via the analogy of trash. The value of what we discard, conceal and detain outlines the border of our collective culture. Thus the artist’s gesture of displaying a work of art in public space becomes one of defiance and generosity.”
We look forward to the next Redfern Biennale.
