Inside running for Venice

By LINDA HERRICK arts editor

We make a huge fuss of participating in and doing well at international sporting events like the Olympic and Commonwealth Games. But when it comes to the Venice Biennale, considered the Olympics of the contemporary art world, New Zealand had no presence at all in the 100-year event until last year.

Jacqueline Fraser and Peter Robinson opened for Aotearoa, along with a dramatic kapa haka group performance in St Mark's Square. Today, Creative New Zealand announced 38-year-old Michael Stevenson, who is based in Berlin while on a CNZ residency, will go to next year's biennale.

CNZ is funding artists to the biennale three times until 2005. The value of participation will then be assessed before further commitment. But many believe New Zealand's continued presence at Venice should become a natural part of the calendar.

"Venice is the only biennale that assures a large audience of curators and zealously interested co-participants," says prominent Australian curator Juliana Engberg, who put together the Humid exhibition at the New Gallery this year. "In answer to the question: should New Zealand participate? I say of course New Zealand should be there. To not be there suggests a lack of ambition to participate in a professional dialogue and that New Zealand artists are unworthy of the same encouragement given to any other professional group."

Says Stevenson, who was one of the four Walters Prize finalists, "I think the arts climate in New Zealand has changed and developed hugely even over the time I have been involved. Participation in Venice invigorates this development. The positive effects, if our presence continues, will benefit the whole New Zealand arts community."

CNZ chief executive Elizabeth Kerr says New Zealand artists have been clamouring to go to the five-month biennale for 30 years.

She says, from the debut alone, the benefits were immediately obvious in terms of visitor numbers to the New Zealand site (22,000), media coverage (184 million people watched the opening ceremony) and, by association, there was the byproduct of a broader interest in things New Zealand aside from the art. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Tourism New Zealand, and Trade New Zealand officials - collectively tagged "New Zealand Inc" - also attended the biennale opening.

Last year, New Zealand had one of the smallest teams at the biennale, which hosts 60 countries - "but the message was loud and clear that we had arrived," says Kerr.

"We learned a lot from that time about what the event is like, and about how you need to cut through the clutter and attract attention. It is very important to let people know the exhibition is from New Zealand, so we are not just taking the visual arts exhibition to Venice - New Zealand is going to the biennale and that's how we see the project.

"That's a bit different from some of the other biennales and arts fairs around the world, where the focus is less on the country and more on the artist."

Auckland Art Gallery director Chris Saines, a member of the artist selection committee, says Stevenson was chosen because "as much as he is building an international reputation from his current Berlin residency he continues to make work which is insistently local - work which is unmistakably about us".

"His work appealed to us because it was playfully probing in its ongoing commentary on the New Zealand condition. We wanted New Zealand to stand out and stand for something and we couldn't go past Stevenson on both counts."

Kerr says New Zealand's profile at the biennale will build gradually. "We were pretty impressed about how much media attention we got, we've got a book of clippings like a door stop. We didn't get a high level of critical attention but we would expect that to build over time."

New Zealand's commitment to the biennale is funded by CNZ to the tune of $500,000 per show. "When you think of it as a five-month exhibition, it is not a huge budget," says Kerr. "We have to hire a venue, contract a project manager, pay fees to the artist and curator, and get the art work there, so it is not much at all."

When the biennale ends next November, Stevenson's body of work - currently in the planning stages - will be brought back to New Zealand via a partnership between CNZ and Wellington's City Gallery, which will show it before it tours the country.

"That will help New Zealanders understand the significance of the biennale," Kerr believes.

Time magazine writer Michael Fitzgerald wrote that New Zealand's debut at the biennale last year was "the most surreal sight" of an event which was consistently surreal. Fraser and Robinson's curator, Greg Burke, told Time their accomplishments "have lengthened the piece of runway that's available for New Zealand artists. They seem to have lifted their sights somewhat."

And that is as good a reason as any to justify New Zealand's ongoing presence at Venice: it is the best opportunity in the world for New Zealand to pound its chest and cry, "Look at us!"