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September 9, 2016 – Review
“Endless Circulation,” TarraWarra Biennial 2016
Tessa Laird
Contemporary biennials are never simply showcases for new work: they bear the weight of meta-commentary. As they struggle to articulate the conditions of their own production and reception, they become lightning rods for debates, not least those concerning art world complicity with, or resistance to, globalization. The networks and flows of art world capital, particularly in relation to sponsorship, have been subject to critique and protest: witness the Sydney and São Paulo biennials of 2014. Meanwhile, artists and commentators continue to police issues of representation: numbers of local artists versus national and international, and continuing gender and racial biases.
The TarraWarra Biennial, founded in 2006, circumvents some of these debates by committing itself to Australian content. The TarraWarra Museum of Art, nestled into Yarra Valley wine country an hour and a half outside of Melbourne, is humble in scale, which means that the works talk to each other and energy isn’t dissipated between venues. It also means, unfortunately, that the show is inaccessible to many Melbournians. For an exhibition proposing circulation as its central motif, it sits far outside the circulatory system of the city.
Nevertheless, the biennial makes clear links back to Melbourne with its selection of artists, which cynics might …