Venice Fellowship - Day 8

11:28 am

Today the rain has been pouring down, and the Acqua Alta is set to reach over 120cm. The roof of the British Pavillion is closed due to the weather, so there are more of us on the front together. For this reason I have been able to listen in to a lot more conversations between delighted/angry/confused visitors.

For the people visiting now, they are immediately faced with a building covered with scaffolding, a roof they can't go up to, and plain white walls inside. It requires work to understand this, and I think it is interesting to consider what this means for us as stewards and the visitors.

For the visitors, they have all paid to come to come here and experience cultures from several different. Some will work hard for the idea they are trying to see, but most expect to come here and have the ideas on a plate. We live in a society where people are used to being able to just buy a ready meal or order food delivery, when they're bored they can just stick the TV on and have entertainment as soon as they want it. Any problem of boredom or difficulty can be solved for less than a days wage. And it's often irritating for the visitors to be faced with this, and have to work to understand it.

This isn't to say that is true for all visitors. Some of them get it straight away and love it.

For us, is it fair that we have to defend the ideas of the curators and the artist? Without the video to explain the concept, we are stood here having to explain to people that it's about abandonment, reconstruction, upheaval etc etc. But is it right for a piece of Art or Architecture to need defending? If it needs to be explained, has it worked?

This makes me consider my own work. Does it need defending? Because often I will make work that is totally spontaneous, sometimes with a voice and thoughts behind it but often just what feels right at the time.

So is it right that I would have to defend it to a viewer? Or should we as artists and makers and designers just say "here it is, what do you think it means?"

It's definitely given me a lot of food for thought.