Venice Biennale exhibition shake-up stirs supporters

You have to wonder about a funding agency making structural changes without consulting those who pump in millions.

Callum Morton will chair the external selection panel for the Australian exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

One imagines Simon Mordant and the Balnaves family are off the Australia Council’s Christmas card list this year after withdrawing their support (read: money) for the Australian exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The philanthropists fired dual broadsides at the government’s arts funding arm this week after it was revealed OzCo had reformed the Biennale commissioning model without consulting donors. Artists now are able to apply to represent at Venice, rather than be invited by a commissioner and expert panel; those roles have been scrapped in favour of an external selection panel chaired by artist Callum Morton. That’s all fair enough, but you do have to wonder about the wisdom of a funding agency making wholesale structural changes without consulting those who prop up its marquee event to the tune of millions of dollars. For more on this story, follow Matthew Westwood in The Australian’s daily arts pages. He has been across it from the start, and will have plenty more to say and report before the 2019 representative is chosen in February.

Ashleigh Wilson visits Del Kathryn Barton in the artist’s Sydney studio today ahead of her major retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria. Barton in her work focuses on maternity, and the recent death of her mother — as she articulates to Wilson on pages 12-13 — has had a profound effect. Barton is one of the most interesting figures on the landscape, and hers is an important story.

As birthday parties go, Elena Kats-Chernin’s takes the cake. The composer turns 60 today, and the milestone is being marked tonight at Sydney’s City Recital Hall with a concert featuring a host of classical stars including soprano Greta Bradman, violinist Dale Barltrop, flautist Jane Rutter and accordionist James Crabb. Kats-Chernin may be of global renown, but her finest achievement, surely, was the time she sat down with Review to compose a score for a mystery recipe. Wrote Westwood:

“Preheat oven to 200 degrees,” she sings, vamping chords in a minor key like it’s a melodrama. No, that won’t do. A cake should be cause for celebration. She tries another idea, this time upbeat and melodious. “Beat six egg whites until soft peaks form.” She still has no idea what she’s singing about. Ideas come in rapid succession, as Kats-Chernin uses the piano as a sounding-board: a waltz, then a pizzicato accompaniment and something rhapsodic. “I know this cake,” she says. “It’s fluffy white, but it has a name. Diaghilev, Nureyev. Wait. Pavlova!”

Review wishes the Russian-born composer all the best for what she is calling her “second 30th”. May there be much pav and piano.