Venice Biennale 2022
Marco Fusinato
Marco Fusinato is a contemporary artist and noise-musician whose work takes the form of installation, photographic reproduction, design, performance and recording.
As an artist, he conceives his work as a succession of interrelated projects, some of which continue across numerous iterations. Within these projects the works are almost always serial and use specific frameworks for experimentation, as if demonstrating a thesis. Working across disciplines and cultural fields, Fusinato explores the tensions and contradictions of opposing forces: underground culture/institutions, noise/silence, minimalism/maximalism, purity/contamination. He creates dynamic situations in which these energies are captured by combining allegorical appropriation with an interest in the intensity of a gesture or event.
Fusinato’s work has been presented in many international exhibitions, including All the World’s Futures, 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2015); The Imminence of Poetics, 30th Sao Paulo Biennale (2012); SUPERPOSITION: Art of Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018); and Australia: Antipodean Stories, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2019). His work was also included in Soundings: A Contemporary Score, the first ever exhibition of sound at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013) and Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix (2008–10), a European travelling exhibition of artists who have collaborated with the New York rock band, Sonic Youth.
Fusinato has held regular solo exhibitions at Anna Schwartz Gallery since 2006 including EXPERIMENTAL HELL (ATMOSPHÆRAM) (2021); THIS IS NOT MY WORLD (2019); Mass Black Implosion (2017); The Infinitives (2015); Mass Black Implosion (Treatise, Cornelius Cardew) (2013); THERE IS NO AUTHORITY (2012); Noise & Capitalism (2010); Double Infinitives (2009) and The Approaching of The Disco Void-Repeated, (2006). He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australian galleries and museums including The National: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2017), Sydney; Parallel Collisions, Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2012); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013); New09, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2009); and multiple iterations of Dark Mofo, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (2021, 2019, 2017, 2016, 2014). In 2012 he presented The Color of the Sky Has Melted, a survey exhibition at Artspace, Sydney and IMA, Brisbane.
As a musician Fusinato explores the idea of noise as music, using the electric guitar and mass amplification to improvise intricate, wide-ranging and physically affecting frequencies. His ongoing series of durational noise-guitar performances Spectral Arrows – described as a monumental aural sculpture – was first performed at The Glasgow International Arts Festival in 2012 and has since been performed in museums and theatres worldwide. He also performs regularly in the experimental music underground, primarily as a solo artist. Fusinato’s first recordings were released in 1996 and he has released many more over subsequent decades, primarily on vinyl format.
Fusinato was the recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship in 2016.
Marco Fusinato is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.
Alexie Glass-Kantor
Alexie Glass-Kantor is a curator, an advocate for the arts and the Executive Director of Artspace, Sydney. Since 2014 she has led the opportunity for co-curated and artist-led projects with peer institutions in 14 countries, including: Jonathan Jones: untitled (transcriptions of country), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021); 경로를 재탐색합니다 UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA, Seoul Museum of Art (2021); Taloi Havini: Reclamation, Dhaka Art Summit (2020); Mel O’Callaghan: Centre of the Centre, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane (2020) and Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2019); Angelica Mesiti: Relay League, Art Sonje, Seoul (2019) and Kunsthalle Tbilisi, Georgia (2018); Helen Johnson, Institute for Contemporary Art, London (2017); and Nicholas Mangan: Ancient Lights, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015).
In 2017 Glass-Kantor conceived 52 ARTISTS 52 ACTIONS, a project which utilised social media to examine socially engaged practice and art-as-action. Since 2015 she has been the curator of Encounters for Art Basel | Hong Kong, dedicated to large-scale installations. Glass-Kantor was co-curator with Natasha Bullock of Parallel Collisions, the 12th Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art (2012) and was in the curatorium for the 13th SITE Santa Fe Biennial, New Mexico. Glass-Kantor is Chair of the Contemporary Art Organisations of Australia and serves on a number of boards and juries including: Academic Board, National Art School, Sydney; Advisory Council, Sydney Contemporary; Advisory Board, Museum of Contemporary Art & Design – De La Salle College of Saint Benilde, Manila; Advance Global Awards jury; and Curatorial Advisory Board, Monash University Curatorial Practice PhD Program. She regularly sits on selection panels for art award and prizes, and participates in public programs, symposiums and lectures across Australia and internationally.
Application and selection process
The artistic team for the Australia Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale was selected through an open, competitive process. An independent Venice Selection Panel, composed of national and international visual arts experts, oversaw the selection. The panel included:
- Rhana Devenport
- Juliana Engberg
- Kelly Gellatly
- Julie Gough
- Aaron Seeto
The following artistic teams were shortlisted:
- Adam Linder and Hannah Mathews
- Dale Harding and Vivian Ziherl
- David Haines, Joyce Hinterding and Anna Davis
- Patrick Pound and Susan Bright
