Adventures in the post medium condition

Through the 55th Venice Biennale with a question, a theory and a pair of umbrellas

 First published in Sleek magazine

On a cold Thursday afternoon in late May, we were standing in a darkened chapel of a former convent in the middle of Venice during the press preview of the 2013 Biennale, and the eerie sound of a man sobbing was reverberating around the room. A tiny, home-made observatory featured an array of telescopes, offering evidence of a very particular obsession. there was a water feature with oversized marble chips emitting an eerie blue glow, and ahead, an oversized glass table covered with 120 objects ranging from irons to clothes airers.

 This was the work of Bedwyr Williams for the Welsh pavilion, entitled “the Starry Messenger”. the piece is at once an homage to amateur astronomers and to terrazzo, the building material which the chapel is covered in. Williams’ main motive is to “explore the relationships between stargazing and the home, the cosmos, and the role of the amateur in a professional world,” using this panoply of disparate elements. “the Starry Messenger” also comprises a video featuring the adventures of a dentist, sound installations, a janitor’s room, and the aforementioned giant table and hotel foyer water feature.

 Terrazzo-patterned canvasses cover the walls and the material is picked up as a theme in both the video piece and the installations. the terrazzo is an extension of the astronomy theme because, for Williams, it is symbolic of our size in relation to the galaxy: we are the “tiny specks”, the chips of quartz and glass that the composite material is made from. the key video piece, made in collaboration with two video-makers from cardiff, is a ilm about a dentist from a mosaic mural becoming animate, and then narrated by someone (it wasn’t clear whether by the dentist himself or a bystander). the point of view of the narrator in the video switches between patients and psyche, childhood trauma and memories.

 Stone again plays a key role, with particles, lecks, chunks and slivers, grinding and fusing together. Shots of saliva running down a dominatrix’s thigh-high boot are followed by views of an aspic terrine on a child’s plate: a wall is demolished and out of its parts, the ubiquitous terrazzo is remade. the dentist is crushed among piles of stones, and loats free in space. Shots of craftsmen cutting Venetian mosaic tiles are followed by shots of teeth being drilled, and the entire effect is one of a psychedelic trip gone awry, in full hd. What did it all mean?

Bedwyr Williams The Starry Messenger