• Declan McGonagle
  

• 
  Winter 2013
  Volume 30. No. 4

Arts Lives and Exhibitions
Declan McGonagle
Exhibitions
National College of Art and Design

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It is estimated that there are now more than 100 Biennales, Biennials and Triennials, and similar recurring art exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in locations, mostly in cities, across the world today. These represent concentrated periods of visual arts programming, often using existing gallery spaces and public spaces – depending on the theme and curatorial orientation of the organizers.

This model usually hinges, firstly, on the inclusion of internationally recognizable figures in the art world with or without national representation; and the inclusion of regional figures and projects, again, depending on the orientation of the curators. In a majority of cases the theme of ‘city’ is cited as a starting point or a major concern of these exhibitions and supplies the underpinning rationale for the commission of new works and in some cases the borrowing of existing works for presentation in gallery or non-gallery spaces. Recently, socially-engaged art projects have started to be included as a matter of course in these larger exhibitions as in Venice and Documenta. It is arguable that deploying the theme of city within such a globally pervasive model of exhibition and experience, risks, paradoxically, abstracting art from place and, therefore, from a transformative engagement with context and from the idea of artmaking and experience being emancipatory, since this prevalent model begins with art and artist rather than place, context or community. To borrow language from another zone, this invests in a focus on the supply side rather than the demand side of this cultural economy.