- Location
- Italy
It is a dreich November day, a day when the whole country is shrouded in mist, perhaps as the aftermath of Halloween or just the reality of autumn. I have the chance to escape and listen to Graham Fagen talking to students at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design about his experience of being chosen to represent Scotland at this year’s Biennale in Venice. Only fourteen days more to go and see his work in the Palazzo Fontana before the close of the Biennale! Maybe fourteen days before Venice, too, succumbs to autumn and the mist drifts into the lagoon. But today seeing images of Venice brings back memories of the Biennale’s preview week in May. Today I feel the need to be transported back to that enveloping warmth, that buzzing hub of art-istry.
I went to the talk with slight trepidation, fearing I would have heard most of it before in talks Graham Fagen gave either before the Biennale opening, at the opening or in private conversations. But I was glad I went; it was inspirational and thought-provoking.
Working with the Scotland+Venice programme and curated by Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Fagen created an exhibition, a new body of work, that The Independent regarded as deserving a Golden Lion – the major prize for an artwork shown at the Biennale. Since the Scottish presentation at Venice was a collateral event, though, which meant it was not part of the main Biennale, Fagen’s exhibition did not stand a chance of even being nominated. But as an artist participating in a collateral event, Fagen had the chance to choose the venue for his exhibition. After seeing a dozen amazing palazzos across the city, he chose the Palazzo Fontana, a beautiful building on the Grand Canal, only a 20-minute walk from the main part of the Biennale in the Giardini.
‘Entra nel Giardino, e Dimentica la Guerra’ beckons brightly in neon above the entrance to the palazzo and invites visitors to enter the garden, forget the war and experience the ‘garden’ of Fagen’s new work. Upstairs on the first floor, in four different rooms, there is no garden in sight… In the first room we enter, there is a single tree – a rope cast in bronze rooted in the middle of a sloping terrazzo floor. Historical and cultural associations intertwine within the ‘Rope Tree’. In his talk, Fagen explains his work in each room in detail and brings us round to the final room, situated directly behind the first. Still no garden. But there is sound, music and perhaps a tree-like installation of four monitors backed by a sepia-coloured landscape painting. This room has a sensational view of the Grand Canal; it is the room where Fagen claims to have sipped wine and nibbled cheese, awaiting his work being transported in crates by boat and transferred to the palazzo. That moment of indulgence evaporated at the sight of the overloaded boat close to capsizing under unbalanced weight of crates being hauled on to the quay. All went well and the near disaster is now in the past.
Back to the final room, back to the sound. The sound and the moving images were about the past! I guess without the past the title of this year’s 56th Biennale, All the World’s Futures, would make no sense.
In 2015, a Scottish artist [Graham Fagen] took inspiration from the 1792 song of a Scottish poet and lyricist [Robert Burns], The Slave’s Lament, and created a five-channel audiovisual installation. Echoes of the displaced and the enslaved filter from loudspeakers and fill the palazzo, where, seemingly, a Pope was born in the 13th century. Fagen tells us that Burns wanted to go to Jamaica and had booked three passages to take up the job as a clerk on a plantation. That would have meant working as slave ‘manager’! Today, we don’t want to think about what that would involve. But he never went to Jamaica. In the palazzo, Burns’ song from the past is brought alive by the musician Ghetto Priest, born and raised in the East End of London to Afro-Caribbean parents, along with the composer Sally Beamish, the musicians of the Scottish Ensemble and the producer Adrian Sherwood. Now, it is a combination of different musical traditions – Scottish folk, classical and reggae – and the result is a contemporary melancholic piece that transfixes us in the palazzo and entices us to forget Venice, the Biennale and the stunning view of the Canal Grande.
Back in Scotland, I learn that during the seven days of official opening Fagen had felt like a celebrity, like an actor on a red carpet… but strangely and reluctantly. “Did you have fun?” a student asked. Fagen hesitated: “Yes, doing what I do best – making artwork”, he said.
