Scotland+Venice Diaries: Of art and wine

Two weeks in, eight weeks to go and we have just about covered the world in terms of the folks we have met from the various international pavillions of the Biennale. Our new companions include Steph from Singapore, Ailish from Ireland, Georg from Germany and the lovely Clifford who is running the whole Zimbabwe show single-handedly.

So far Rialto Pier and Campo Santa Margarita have been our regular haunts. At Campo Santa Margarita you can find mass groups of Venetian students sitting around the square until the small hours drinking, amazingly decent, 1 Euro wine from the many traditional and friendly bars around the square. Rialto Pier is even more cheap and cheerful, with a bring-your-own policy (it’s a public jetty) and a chatty, relaxed atmosphere on by the Grand Canal.

Between the four of us we have now seen a plethora of art, yet merely scratched the surface of what the Biennale has to offer.

Art-wise, our top highlights from this week include The Future Generation Art Prize (watch out for the work of winning artist Cynthia Marcelle) and François Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi which is incredible (especially video pieces by Francesco Vezzoli and Joanna Vasconcelos’ textile extravaganza ‘Contamination’).  

 

Ciao for now – off for an early evening spritz,

 

Emma and Alex