Zeno phobia

Published on Tuesday 17 June 2003 01:00

Nicoló and Antonio Zeno were Venetian brothers who, it is said, sailed with the Earl of Orkney to the coast of North America in the late 14th century. The best evidence for their voyage is an account of their journey and a map published 200 years later.

Reflecting this shadowy episode, Zenomap has been adopted as the title for the Scottish presence this year in the Venice Biennale, the biggest art jamboree of all, which opened on Sunday and runs until 2 November. Supported by the SAC and the British Council, this is a new Scottish venture and the choice of title deliberately suggests that there has been very little significant exchange between Scotland and Venice since the Earl of Orkney set sail for America, and consequently very little Scottish participation in the Biennale. Indeed, the press release specifically claims that Scotland is participating independently for the first time in the Biennale.

Scotland is represented by three artists - Simon Starling, Clare Barclay and Jim Lambie - in a palace on the Grand Canal, the Ca’ Gustinian-Lollin. There is also a selection of eight films in a school gymnasium nearby and a variety of web-based and paper ephemera by 12 more artists. I will come back to the art.

Meanwhile, though I am sure the Zeno brothers really did exist and the Earl of Orkney did sail to America, as far as Scotland and the Biennale are concerned, the Zenomap story is not quite accurate. In fact, there was a separate Scottish room in the early years but more importantly there was also a major Scottish presence at the Biennale in 1990, organised by Barbara Grigor. In the face of British official obstruction but at the invitation of the Director of the Biennale and to commemorate Mackintosh’s participation 100 years before, David Mach, Arthur Watson and Kate Whiteford took over the entrance to the Biennale Gardens, the Giardini.

For all its claim to be historic, this year’s presence is much less noticeable. Zenomap does appear in the catalogue, but on the very last page and in a kind of addendum.

Though the artists’ names are listed in the index, Scotland does not appear in the list of participating countries. Not all of these listed countries have a presence in the Giardini. There simply isn’t the room. So a good many late-coming nations have pavilions scattered throughout Venice. But officially, as we are not listed, we do not have a national presence, though the ground floor of the same palace, the Ca’ Gustinian-Lollin, is the official national pavilion of Singapore. The Welsh, who also have a presence this year, are treated the same way. They are there, but not there. The politics of this is obvious. The British Council maintains an iron grip on how we are seen abroad. In the Biennale they control the British Pavilion, which has a dominant position in the Giardini. In the 58 years and 27 Biennales since the war, the only Scottish artists to be chosen for the British Pavilion have been Eduardo Paolozzi in 1958 and Mark Boyle in 1978 - and only Boyle was given the whole pavilion. Paolozzi had to share it with four others. The real objective for the SAC should be a share of the use of the British Pavilion. Then there would be a real Scottish presence at the Biennale once again. Let’s have Kenny Hunter representing Scotland and Britain next time round, for instance.

So what about Zenomap? The Ca’ Gunstinian-Lollin is a crumbling Venetian Palazzo and the Scottish artists have got the main floor, the piano nobile. Maybe in the Giardini you could avoid the challenge of Venice, a city where art and history are omnipresent. But here it is in your face. The windows open on to the Grand Canal.

The ceilings are immensely high with enormous chandeliers. The walls are covered in mirrors and figured silk, faded and ripped, and a set of 18th-century mythological paintings hang in the central space. Here Simon Starling has installed a floating island that he made for Loch Lomond, complete with vegetation crowned by a rhododendron. It is a complicated story, but it has to do with the campaign to eliminate rhododendrons from Scotland’s first National Park. Starling’s island is a refuge for a condemned alien. In the end Scottish National Heritage refused him permission to install it in the loch. It makes a charming enough spectacle and, here in this floating city, the fact that it is meant to float is, I suppose, a Venetian reference, but what the wider world will make of this essay in obscure Scottish environmental politics, I cannot imagine.

The other two artists have taken on the location more directly. Claire Barclay has two rooms. In one she has hung a piece of glass made especially for the occasion. Venice and glass go together, obviously, but the rest of her references here are so low-key as to be entirely inscrutable. In the other room it is more straightforward. She has chosen to rework the pattern on the peeling silk of the walls and hang it on a set of oak screens. There is an empty Doge’s hat and the timber recalls Venice’s naval grandeur. But that is about it and it is not much.

Jim Lambie really has taken on the place, however. The floor is covered with his trademark stripes, a jagged pattern of black and white, and on this he has set a series of extraordinary sculptures, doors and mirrors folded at sharp angles, edged with narrow strips of mirror and painted in sharp colours. One of the two rooms he occupies is a striking Art Deco creation and his work looks quite at home there. His inspiration is not just Venetian, but is still Italian.

Always interested in the history of design, it comes, he says, partly from the Milanese design group, Memphis, formed under the leadership of Ettore Sottsass 20 years ago. But if the Memphis designers were concerned with bringing radical new life into functional design, Lambie’s work is wholly abstract. He calls it drawing. The pattern on the floor, he says, is like hatching in drawing. Against that ground the sculptures are drawn figures, and that is how it works. The mirrors blend figure and ground. Like its surroundings, it is highly visual and that is something to be proud of in the Venice Biennale, where the visual in visual art often seems like a dirty word.

I did see most of the films. It was 10pm, the temperature was in the 90s and there was no air conditioning, but I don’t think it was just the circumstances that make me think they are pretty marginal and the printed ephemera even more so. The success or failure of Zenomap will depend on the three main artists.

Jim Lambie can hold his own. The other two will make little impact and is that really how we want Scotland to be seen? To find them, we are told, the two selectors, Francis McKee and Kay Pallister, appointed by the SAC and both from Glasgow, travelled Scotland from Berwick to Lewis. It’s strange and suspiciously circular that having started from Glasgow, after such a search the 23 artists chosen, including these three and all the others involved, should all be virtually the same age, their thirties - only one is younger and one older - and that 18 of them work in Glasgow. Not a very balanced view, I am afraid.