Finale

This will be the final post about my internship at the Biennale. I have learned a number of things. Having worked previously at a local gallery, working for a festival was vastly different for me, even though i was working in the same department. It started of quite slow, but got really intense over the three months. It was interesting for me to take guided tours of general public, as opposed to what i was initially used to - school groups (although i took a couple of great school tours). I loved seeing the way people interacted with the works, hearing stories about how Kader Attia's works reminded people of different places they had seen or visited; the awe when people saw the exploding cars; the reaction to AES+F's fantastic video, visceral responses to Dale Frank's paintings, etc. Working in Public Programs is great in the sense that I love seeing reactions that people have to contemporary art, which vary from "I can do this myself" to thought-provoking laments and conversations with visitors to the Biennale. Another great aspect, which was also confidence building for me, was liaising with and meeting international artists. I have to try and not be so starstruck when i do meet international artists, but working with the Biennale, especially in opening weeks allowed me to start getting over the nerves. This was a great experience, and I thank those who made it happen - Dr. Gay McDonald and Kim Snepvangers (COFA), Dougal Philips and Nisa Mackie (BoS). Also, it was great networking with the BoS staff, who were all supportive and a great team.

Kids Days 1, 2 and 3

This post will deal with my involvement in the kid's days at Cockatoo Island, organised by the Public Programs and Education department. As i have mentioned previously, the interns (and Sarah and Bekah from the Tour Guide group) came up with the theme of the kids days (escape from prison island!) and the activities associated with it. We came up with the design of the map, the go-to works for kids and ended up culling a few activities, but had 3 really cool kids activities remaining. On the first day, Bekah and I manned the hat-making activity at the top of the island - located with the guard house. These hats were the symbol of the prisoners (the kids), and was the first stop for kids on their map. By the end of the day, we were pretty skilled at the origami activity and could probably have folded hats in our sleep. Working with kids is not something new to me, and it was a nice enough day for the activity to be enjoyable and it was good to see a sizeable crowd on the island.
On the second Saturday, i was at the Glitter station. We allowed kids to use glitter paint to create stencils, with logos significant to the Biennale (which were created by Johnathan Barnbrook). This station was really messy, i had glitter everywhere. Though again, it was worth the fun, most kids were very well behaved. We had alot of waste at the end of the day though. The glitter workshop was in conjunction with the work of NZ artist Reuben Paterson (who had his famous glitter works in a house at the top of the Island).
The third saturday was by far the loveliest day in terms of weather, and i was stationed at the blowpainting station. This was located with one of the most popular works of the Biennale - Cai Guo Qiang's Inopportune Stage One (the exploding cars). Kids absolutely loved both the work and the activity station and my black boots are covered in paint, but it was again a great experience.
The kids days were a success. The activities we implemented were easy to administer, fun and engaging for the visiting children. The three kids days saw massive crowds visit the Biennale.

Touring Part II

This entry will deal with the couple of tours where i've had some problems. Of course, it took a while for me to be comfortable enough to be confident in my ability to lead tours, and i think this was reflected in my delivery. Perhaps i am being too harsh on myself, however, it seemed that it was impossible for me to find the right words to articulate the essential meanings of the artwork, even though i had been studying these artists (and had the luck and chance to meet some of them) for three months. However, after my first couple of tours, i settled into the routine and the information flowed from me quite naturally. The general public have been great, and most of those taking the guided tours have been keen, interested, and supportive. For the most part, they have been engaged and have asked appropriate questions and made positive comments. For the first time, in any of my experiences in leading and providing guided tours both at the Biennale or even Casula Powerhouse, i had one participant say some politically incorrect comments. I think this was a learning curb for me - i decided to not justify her comments by refraining from commenting at all. But other than a couple of glitches on this one tour, all has been going well, and the guided tours, albeit with continuously fluctuating numbers, have been pleasant a experience.

Touring Part I

COFA and the Biennale have had a long standing relationship - a component of this includes the delivery of free guided tours for the general public. Having studies the Masters course - Education and Public Programs, 8 students, myself included, were selected to partake in the guided touring program for the 17th Biennale of Sydney. This project included several seminars in which Dougal and Nisa provided us with essential information about artists and their work on cockatoo island. From this we gained alot of necessary information and insight into the artists practice, thoughts and the manifestations of these ideas through art. essentially, we are sent once (or twice) a week to cockatoo island to provide guided tours for the general public. I have been working mainly on weekdays, and have had tour group numbers as large as 30 and as small as 1 (which happened to be my first ever tour). Even though i have had two years of experience in providing guided tours for groups, i managed to feel incredibly nervous on my first couple of tour days. Thankfully, however, the trickier audiences didn't come until i was well into the swing of things. In a sense, guiding for the general public, as opposed to school groups, is vastly different. In order to try and maintain the attention of the audience, its important to provide interesting facts and be approachable and engaging. Whereas with educational groups, alot of the tour material i provided was related inherently to a syllabus or curriculum. Pitching to the general public is hard, where some people have extensive knowledge in the field of contemporary art, and some who have not ever attended a biennale. Usually, its best to provide the information behind the biennale - what a biennale is, and the theme of the 17th Biennale of sydney. As it stands, most of my tour groups have remained with me for the entire tour, with very few people dropping off. I try to keep the tours informative, but short enough to ensure that the audience does not get too fatigued navigating the rather large venue.

Entry 6: Opening Week II

On opening day, I had my first taste of Biennale artist talks at the MCA - they were incredibly insightful, and i got to meet a few really amazing international artists - Brett Graham, Fred Tomaselli, Penelope Siopis and Conrad Botes. Their talks gave an amazing insight into their practice and their personalities too. That night was the artists and supporters party - which was HUGE. The images are online - it was packed. It was a cold night, but it was great fun, nonetheless. It was quite amazing to see so many people from the artworld congregated in the one place. The following day was the day of the first of the Biennale's forums. This one was the Afro-Carribean forum at Artspace, which proceeded the Artists' talks, which were once again insightful. I helped Dougal set up for the forum, which was great. I took alot of snapshots, but the topics and the subject matter discussed by the panelists was intriguing - especially having closely studied topics such as Diaspora, displacement and the effect which these concepts have upon the artists creating work, how such concepts manifest in their various media and curatorial concepts. The panel included Barthelemy Toguo, Leah Gordon, Joy Gregory, Isaac Julien, Conrad Botes, Roger Ballen, Amal Kenawy, Teka Selman, Penny Siopis and was chaired by David A. Bailey. The following day, Friday, was spent at the First day of the opening week forum - which again, saw my starstruck nature come to the fore - there were a number of famous artists, curators and artworld officianados which Jackie and i greeted at the AGNSW for the day's proceedings.

Entry 5: Opening Week I

The first part of opening week for me started on Friday and continued on Monday (as i'm not able to work weekends due to my other working commitments). On friday afternoon, PPE interns and supervisors had a meeting prior to the artists/staff bbq on cockatoo island. We went over our rather hectic schedules for opening week and then got to meet a number of artists and benefactors who were also on the island for the bbq. Its quite amazing to be able to meet artists in person in a professional environment, and to be able to chat to them about their practice and interests. To be quite honest, i was pretty much starstruck for the whole of opening week. The following week was interesting and exciting. Being the only intern who hadn't yet been to the airport for a pick-up, i was sent to get Cai Guo Qiang's assistant who had jetted all the way from New York. As part of Opening week, the interns were moving between the office, the airport, the several Biennale venues and the Sofitel Wentworth, which is where all the artists were staying. The following day was the Vernissage/Media Preview. I had the opportunity to usher one of the artists on Cockatoo Island, Barthelemy Toguo to and from the Island for the Media preview. We then helped him complete his performance outside the MCA. That night was the MCA opening, and we were able to attend the post-drinks at the Opera Bar. Wednesday the 12th of May was the big opening day - the First Day the 17th Biennale of Sydney was open to the public. It was a big day - going from venue to venue, cockatoo island, then to the MCA to set up for the Artists talks, arrange the Education Hub, etc. I'll address Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the Opening Week in more detail in the next Entry, stay tuned.

Entry 4: Getting closer to Opening Week!

In the lead up to opening week, PPE staff had the task of arranging and organising all the public programs components of the Biennale - this included forums, artists' talks, Guided Tours, etc. Seeing as Guided Tours are a component of my Internship, i'll touch on those in a few of my later entries. But in preparation for the forums and artists talks, the interns had to acquire a range of materials and supplies for the forums, artists talks and even things for performative artworks. I was sent by Nisa and Dougal on a shopping excursion to find a number of things for both the office and forums to take place during opening week. I think this task was probably one of the most exciting and strangest i've ever been asked to complete, but it was a great experience, especially trying to, as i mentioned previously, buy to budgeted amounts. I found it difficult to source the most commonplace things, like decent tablecloths, etc. But it was an adventure nonetheless. Amidst this, we were arranging forum plans and checklists, artist pick-ups and trying to juggle a number of different tasks. During our shifts in the office throughout the week, we also got to sit in on inter-departmental meetings - with the curatorial team to finalise the cockatoo island map, and marketing as well. With regards to the map, and all of the Biennale visual identity, it was interesting to see and external party working with Johnathan Barnbrook's designs for the biennale. Nisa and I had to take the kids' day map (which will again be addressed in a later entry) to the design firm who created all the free materials, and seeing their cohesion to the theme which was designed by another firm was interesting. I think that setting up and preparing for the events in opening week was a great insight into how things run in arts organisations and how strict budgeting can be.

Entry 3: More Officework and Research

In the weeks leading up to the opening of the Biennale, the Education Interns were asked to do a range of research and contact duties. One of these tasks was to contact schools from disavantaged areas, or schools from the Priority Schools Funding Program to allow them to partake in the Biennale incentive which would reimburse them for the travel from georgraphically distanced areas in the greater Sydney region to come out and see some of the Biennale Venues (including MCA and Cockatoo Island). Coming from Western Sydney, i can appreciate this scheme by the Biennale, as it takes a fair amount of travel to get to the city, and these sorts of incentives are a great way to ensure all schools in all areas of sydney are able to be part of the Biennale and it allows for students to see an amazing amount of international, cutting edge contemporary art which they may not be exposed to normally, or will only see in the form of documentation. The challenges, however, of contacting schools and raising awareness and interest was rather difficult with only a few schools responding to our requests in the first few weeks.

As well as this, the interns also had to contact places for coach hire which would service an opening week event - the curator bus tour. Often, activities like this one would take up to a week to finalise to due to the collection of prices and quotes from organisations, and finding a price which would be allowable for our budget.Often times, this would require having to explicitly state the not-for-profit nature of the Biennale and its significance in the art world. Working in the office also required working alongside other departments like marketing, curatorial and events to ensure that all our planned events were adequately marketed and had an up to date guest list. Its always interesting to see the ways in which different departments work together.

Entry 2 - Officework @ BoS

As an intern with Public Programs and Education, the first few weeks of our uni semester involved alot of office tasks and duties to ensure the maintence of the department, and to ensure that events were carefully planned and completely organised before they occurred.

The first event that the interns worked on as a team was the Art Month talk in late March. This talk occurred as a part of Art Month in Sydney, and involved Biennale Artistic Director, David Eliott and 3 exhibiting artists in the biennale - Warren Fahey, Mikala Dwyer and Newell Harry. These artists spoke about their works for the biennale and the concept of the biennale as pitched by David Eliott - the beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a precarious age.

The PPE interns helped with the setup of the venue, which was Artspace, and ensured that guests were marked off the RSVP list and seated. The only challenging aspect of this event was to ensure that everyone was seated and able to attain the most of the talk.

Internship Blog 1

This is the first of a series of blog entries which will feature the highlights of my internship, which is part of the Masters of Arts Administration at COFA (UNSW).

At this point in time, due to the nature of the organisation with whom i am completing part of my internship with, i have completed only 4 days of work, which were highly uneventful. Again, given the nature of the organisation, more work will be given to the interns as the event/s draw closer. I am currently undertaking work with the Public Programs and Education department

I have met most staff in the organisation, had opportunity to sit in on a cross-departmental meeting (including Public Programs and Education, Marketing, Curatorial and Design), view artist videos and interviews, and helped with a public programs event for Art Month.

There will be more to come soon.