Venice Biennale, 2009

Last week my manager calls me up from Italy and says 'Get your ass on the plane, you should be in Venice right now!'. I've been so crazy busy I'd forgot all about the Venice Biennale, probably the biggest and most important event in the art world. It happens every 2 years and is a non-commercial temporary exhibition that includes hundreds of artists from all over the world.

The main parts are the Gardinari where ma y countries have there own unique exhibition space, a little pavilion each where they show their local artists, and the Arsenale which is a huge curated section where the Biennale director chooses who and what goes in. On top of this there are countless satellite events all over Venice.

The Biennale runs until November, here's a few images from my brief, 4 day, adventure:

Venice is tiny, you can walk across the whole town in an hour but mostly you take water taxis through the canals. No roads, no cars, only walk or travel by boat or gondola.

heading into venice in style baby!

so, these shots are from the curated section, beautiful and massive warehouses called the Arsenale.

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No much painting to be seen but these in the Italian paviion were fascinating.

These sculptures were one of my favourite things in the whole show.

Wonderful skies while i was there.

My hotel interior.

Every where you look is a postcard moment.

Your boy!

The mos impressive thing in Venice were the churches. I'm not religious but these buildings and the paintings and sculpture inside really put the whole Biennale to shame.

went to a killer party on this rich guys boat.

these shots are from the Gardinari part of the biennale where each country had it's own pavilion.

no, this is not an ikea showroom, it's the german pavilion.

this is the outside of the american pavilion by Bruce Nauman, actually pretty good this one.

This is a collateral event at the Peggy Guggenheim collection, Robert Rauschenberg sculptures from the eighties. great stuff.

This was very impressive, a private museum by a super rich French collector named Pinault. He had work by every major artist you've ever heard of, Rachel Whiteread below and Richard Prince just to the left. Sorry for the crap photos but they kept hassling me not to take shots so i sneaked these in with my camera phone.

The Chapman Brothers second version of their work 'Fucking Hell'. The first one burnt down in Saatchi's fire.

Sigmar Polke, doesn't look much in photos but these huge varnish soaked canvases were wonderful.

These sculptures by Cattelan were solid marble.

Man, I'm sick of Murakami but I always loved these huge manga figures from his earlier work.