The 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2009 ‘Making Worlds’ directed by Daniel Birnbaum opened to the public on June and continues until November 22.

Ireland’s participation was curated by Caoimhín Corrigan, Irish Commissioner for Venice, who selected Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy and KennedyBrowne their collaborative entity, to represent Ireland at the 53rd Biennale .

Sarah Browne has commissioned a bespoke hand-knotted carpet from Donegal Carpets, a company renowned for its prestigious tradition of producing rugs for Irish embassies abroad, as well as from state institutions such as The White House and Buckingham Palace. Local women, most of whom now work in the Heritage Centre which has replaced it, were re-employed to make the carpet, designed by Browne with reference to modernist designs such as the work of Eileen Grey (who also commissioned Donegal Carpets to create some of her iconic pieces) using only the surplus wool stocks remaining at the factory. A separate 18mm film work features the workers discussing their sense of connection with their labour and their experience of producing a hand-crafted work which resonates strongly with the notion of ‘nationality’.

Gareth Kennedy mixes elements of art, architecture, performance and design in his practice. For Venice, Kennedy explores the subtleties of local economies and creativity in the animation of civic spaces. He transplants buskers from Dublin city centre into the aspiring civic spaces within Dublin’s Docklands, and subsequently to the port setting of Venice. Using busking as a micro-economic and socio-economic act, he surveys the architecture and ambitions of these settings and their respective relationship to the performing artist.

Kennedy Browne is the name under which the two artists author a discrete body of work, distinct from their individual practices. For the 53rd International Biennale, a new video work from Kennedy Browne addresses Dublin as a city of 167 languages. The work features a segment of text by American economist and leader of the Chicago School of Economics, Milton Friedman, on how the pencil exemplifies the potential of the free market economy, spoken by a volunteer cast in over 40 languages, located in the iconic trade union setting of Liberty Hall overlooking the city.

The official Irish representation was at the Irish Pavilion in Instituto Santa Maria della Pietà, Calle della Pietà, a good spot but alas not the Giardini where most of the action takes place. For the first time the Irish Pavilion shared a venue with the Northern Irish Pavilion where Susan McWilliam was the representative with ” Remote Viewing’ which added a collective strength to the representation.

The strongest aspect of Ireland at Venice however was John Gerrard’s collateral event ‘Animated Scene’ in a vast boathouse on the island of Certosa. Presented by RHA projects and Culture Ireland the exhibition showed with three new works by Gerrard which represented a step up in scale and ambition from his previous work and an increased mastery of his realtime 3D technique. Indeed one was left wondering why Gerrard wasn’t Ireland official representative is there still a reticence about digital art in 2009?

John Gerrard: Animated Scene

More images from Venice are available on our Flickr Venice Biennale set