UPDATE: A reader has pointed out that New Zealand was actually first to announce its national representation. In October, the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa named Lisa Reihana as New Zealand’s artist for the 57th Venice Biennale.
Just weeks after the 56th Venice Biennale closed—drawing more than half a million visitors—some countries are keen to get off the blocks with their respective artists for the 57th edition in 2017. The National Gallery of Canada recently announced that Vancouver-born Geoffrey Farmer will take over the Canadian Pavilion. Farmer’s Leaves of Grass installation was a talking point at Documenta13 in 2012 (visitors were intrigued by the 16,000 figures cut out from Life magazine, and mounted on dried-grass sticks). Australia, meanwhile, is also keen to spread the word about its artist, Brisbane-born Tracey Moffatt whose short film Night Cries was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. “Tracey is the first Australian indigenous artist to present a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale marking this appointment as significant, bold and inspirational,” says the pavilion commissioner Naomi Milgrom. Natalie King is the pavilion curator; Moffatt quips: “We three are dead serious about art. Naomi with her collecting and commissioning, Natalie who has worked as a curator for more than half her life and as for me, I haven’t really had a life; I’ve only had art.”
