4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art proudly presents The Sydney Pavilion, titled The Floating Eye as part of the 9th Shanghai Biennale 2012, Reactivation.

The Shanghai Biennale is the largest international art event in mainland China, expected to attract over 8 million visitors and is led in 2012 by Qiu Zhijie (Chief Curator) and co-curators, Jens Hoffman (Director, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts), Boris Groys (art critic) and Johnson Chang (curator and co-founder of the Asia Art Archive).

The Inter-City Pavilions’ Project, one of the platforms of the biennale is under the direction of Qiu Zhijie housed in a number of historic buildings throughout the city. 4A has been selected as the only Australian organisation with The Sydney Pavilion occupying part of an Art Deco building located near the Bund and is one of 30 international institutions invited to represent their city which will include Pavilions spanning from Amsterdam, Berlin, Brooklyn, Istanbul, Mexico City, Moscow and Sendai.

Curated by 4A’s Director, Aaron Seeto, The Floating Eye presents new and existing works from six contemporary Australian artists, Brook Andrew, Shaun Gladwell, Raquel Ormella, Khaled Sabsabi, Shen Shaomin and Bababa International.

In a location like Sydney, Australia’s oldest settler city, with its Aboriginal history, colonisation, waves of mass migration, shifting economic bases and trade, awareness of the natural environment, natural disasters there is no single narrative and straightforward representative space of its history.

Sydney’s geography between Asia and the West results in the constant overlaying of different historical and cultural contexts. In presenting the personal accounts generated by individual artists, to mark out the engagements and the discontinuities they experience as they try to negotiate ideas of locality and culture in globalised context, all of the artists in The Floating Eye articulates a specific history of Australia; a feeling of being connected and disconnected simultaneously.

The exhibition encourages an observation of a city’s shifting references and influences, how the overlay of time and history and our emotions and sensations of a place, give meaning and form to our shared spaces. As such the contemporary artists in The Floating Eye hold strong connections with Sydney and offer varied perspectives of the city’s transforming reality observed though its demographics, environment, history, politics, geography and society.

Together the artists in The Floating Eye presents a framework to illustrate how Sydney, and Australia, considers itself within the region and highlights the layering of histories and diverse social and cultural experiences, which speak to the experience of individuals living in global cities such as Sydney.

Access the Media Release here.

Access the Media Release (Chinese) here.

Video Interviews

Curator, Aaron Seeto and participating artists Raquel Ormella and Khaled Sabsabi introduce The Sydney Pavilion exhibition, The Floating Eye part of the Inter-City Pavilions Project at the 9th Shanghai Biennale 2012. The exhibition is on until 30 December 2012.

Video interviews by Das Platforms.

  

Media Coverage

Sydney Morning Herald by Kristie Kellahan

 

Sydney Pavilion Blog

Check out 4A’s dedicated SYDNEY PAVILION, THE FLOATING EYE BLOG for more information on participating artists and regular updates as the project unfolds.

 

Publication

A special Sydney Pavilion publication will be produced featuring contributions by Michael Fitzgerald, Olivier Krischer, Aaron Seeto, Souchou Yao amongst others.