2006 Sydney Biennale goes well out of the comfort zone

Charles Merewether has scattered 85 artists between 16 galleries.

The curator of the 2006 Sydney Biennale, Charles Merewether, has spent most of the past two years searching the world for art, especially in the less-travelled parts of Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

In the 20 years since Merewether lived in Australia he has spent 10 years as a curator for the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, as well as working on biennales in Johannesburg, Istanbul and Sao Paulo, and living in Mexico, Barcelona and Columbia.

In the past 18 months he visited 62 cities in 45 countries, looking at the work of more than 1600 artists, but denies he was ever really off the beaten path.

"It's all relative," says Merewether, who experienced gunfire in Cairo. "It depends on how you define what's central and what's not. When you get to Beirut, you realise that this is a centre of another universe and some people have done fantastic work with artists from Lebanon way before me."

Established in 1973, the 2006 Biennale is Sydney's 15th and is one of the longest-running in the world. This year's event is titled Zones of Contact and is an exploration of the places where cultures interact and how they negotiate their place in the world.

One reason for Merewether's extensive search is that he wanted to offer a wider perspective, addressing the fact that many international art events, including the Sydney Biennale, favour particular regions. He felt there had been distinct gaps in the regions represented in previous biennales.

"I had a particular concern to challenge the Western canon in terms of what counts and what's of value," he says. "And that there was a lot that was going on elsewhere in the world that needed to be brought into view - into the mix."

"Zones of Contact really begged for me to look at parts of the world and the engagement between cultures.

"I didn't want it to be simply an exhibition about the West and the Other at all. That seems to me a sort of false dichotomy. The West is composed of many cultures, not the least the reason for which is colonialism and globalisation.

"You go to Kazakhstan and there are third generation Koreans who have come from the period of Stalin deported there. You go to Berlin and the artists that I chose [from there] happened to be from Pakistan and China."

Many of the works explore ideas of landscape, but the architecture that occupies and shapes those places also plays an important role in the exhibition. One example is Romanian artist Calin Dan's video Emotional Architecture, which looks at the socialist architecture of Eastern Europe.

"It is very much about the legacy of the architecture, the very oppressive architecture built under the dictatorship and living in that," says Merewether. "So you're living in a sort of residual legacy of a dictatorship, trying to forge a democracy."

The ideas that Zones of Contact explores are the issues of our time, he says. He thinks it is important to raise the awareness of Australians to what is happening in the wider world.

One strategy Merewether has employed is to scatter the exhibition's 85 artists among 16 galleries, stretching to the fringes of Sydney.

"The showing of the works across different venues with different communities and publics [becomes] another form or another level in terms of a zone of contact," he says.

The exhibition is an evocative one with powerful stories of catastrophes, hardship or healing. New Zealand artist Stella Brennan's work explores the Erebus disaster. There are also tales of ethnic cleansing, bombings, brutality and discrimination. Other works are more whimsical, celebrating the diversity and distinctiveness of their culture, sometimes incorporating old folk tales. So is it the story, which is the content of the work, that has the impact? Or the work itself?

"Stories can be overwhelming, but I think it's like a good novel," says Merewether. "There are a lot of novels out there, and books and films, which address important issues, but do they come alive for you, however important the issue?

"I think that if you're struck by the story, you're struck by the story because of the form. The form is what makes the story come alive or vivid for you."

Although some works come from or reference situations where survival would be the foremost priority, they also demonstrate the resilience of culture.

"When the East Timorese were overtaken by the Indonesians, they burnt the libraries. And one of the first things they did was to seek - from the solidarity committee in Melbourne - to reconstruct the library," says Merewether, referring to a work by Australian artist Tom Nicholson, which has photos of the books that were donated.

"I think that's a good symbol, in a way, of the importance of culture.

"Culture brings not only knowledge, education and understanding, but it also represents a hope - the hope of a civil society. So it's always there, even during the Balkan wars in Sarajevo.

"I went there at the end of the war in the mid-90s and they were organising a film festival and trying to [put together] an arts events - crucial to restoring a culture."

* Zones of Contact, 2006 Biennale of Sydney at the MCA, Sydney and other venues to August 27.

* Andrew Clifford flew to Sydney with Qantas and stayed at the Sheraton Four Points, courtesy of Tourism New South Wales