The Dorset Pavilion, an artist project that questions the idea that Venice Biennale pavilions should only be for countries and that celebrates and interrogates art’s connection to local community is on view from September 3rd – October 30th 2024, Tuesday–Sunday, 12.00–19:00, Biennale Spaces, Castello 96/95, Venezia 30122.
Jon Adam / David Appleby / Robyn Bamford / Alexia De Ferranti / Silva De Majo / Bill Douglas / Hugh Dunford Wood / Jane Fox / Jeremy Gardiner / Andy Goldsworthy / Ed Hall / Henrietta Hoyer Millar / Ellen Harvey / PJ Harvey / Veronica Hudson / Lower Heywood Farm / Kalika Kulukundis / Sophie Molins / Fiamma Colonna Montagu / Alan Rogers / Ella Squirrell / Jack Wall / Amanda Wallwork / Will White / Flora Wood
The Dorset Pavilion exhibits practices unique to the UK county of Dorset: art that is made locally but speaks transglobally, art made away from cities at the border of the sea that speaks to deep time, art that is political, literary, historical, land-based and the visceral.
Lost Sheep Productions, Common Ground, and Lower Hewood Farm present works alongside established Art World figures such as Andy Goldsworthy and Ellen Harvey. There is a Tolpuddle Martyrs/Bibby Stockholm Union Banner by Ed Hall; a fossil design by Will White; sheep skin art work by Lower Hewood Farm; Murano glass work by Sophie Molins; film works such as stills by David Appleby from Comrades by Bill Douglas – and Common Ground’s Arcadia (BFI/BBC); alongside weaver and ceramicist Jacy Wall; ceramicist Silva De Majo and Robyn Wood, painters Jon Adam, Janie Fox, Jeremy Gardiner, Henrietta Hoyer Miller, Veronica Hudson, Alan Rogers, Ella Squirrel and Amanda Wallwork and Printmakers Flora Wood and Hugh Dunford Wood. This is a Local Pavilion that celebrates the parish-sized thinking that is both resurgent and under threat from UK Inc.
A custom installation of The Disappointed Tourist created for the Dorset Pavilion — a painting of the demolished Dorset Sawbridge-Erle Draw Mausoleum as well as the text submitted about the building which highlights the source of the wealth that funded this extravagant building – the family’s Barbados plantations. The two paintings are hung over a wallpaper of selections from The Disappointed Tourist, for which Harvey has painted over 300 sites submitted by members of the public in response to the question “Is there some place that you would like to visit or revisit that no longer exists?” Harvey’s family lived in Dorset prior to emigrating to Milwaukee in the 1980s.