I’m joined by Richard Bell, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists, will wrap a replica of the Australian Pavilion in chains, put it on a barge, and sail it throughout the Venetian lagoon during the Venice Biennale as part of a his new work “Embassy 2019” in May.
Both art spectacle and critique, Embassy 2019 is funded by the artist himself, Milani Gallery, the Australia Council for the Arts, private donors, and a public crowd funding campaign.
An interrogation of the impacts of colonialism and global capital, Embassy 2019 includes Bell’s ongoing work EMBASSY. EMBASSY has been recently acquired by London’s TATE Modern.
Bell proposes to wrap a to-scale replica of the Australian Pavillion in chains (in reference to the seminal nineteenth century image of Aboriginal men), site it on a barge, and sail it throughout the Venetian lagoon.
EMBASSY will be staged in Giardino della Marinaressa for the duration of the Venice Biennale.
Embassy 2019 is a continuation of the Indigenous land rights and anti-racism activism mobilized through the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy established January 1972 on the lawns of Australian Parliament.
“EMBASSY is an homage to the originators of the first Tent Embassy, in Canberra, in 1972,” Bell says. “Equally, it is an act of support for the young people who began setting up Tent Embassies around Oz from about 2009-2010.”
Embassy 2019 will be staged as part of the European Cultural Centre’s international art project, “Personal Structures”.
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