Venetians flock to Kiwi art launch

INTERACTIVE: Among the Kiwi artworks on display is this blanketed figure, Richard 2008, from Francis Upritchard's Save Yourself exhibition.

Reuters

ON DISPLAY: Members of kapa haka group Te Waka Huia at Piazza San Marco during the opening of New Zealand's pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

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A bit of Kiwi culture has passed through Venice with a start of the world's oldest art festival, the Venice Biennale.

Kapa haka group Te Waka Huia brought Venice's historic Piazza San Marco to a standstill on Wednesday to help launch the New Zealand exhibitions of Francis Upritchard and Judy Millar and led a rousing early-morning procession through the watery city's streets.

Upritchard's exhibition, Save Yourself, includes clusters of figures situated on wooden platforms which extend out from the base of giant antique mirrors. Upritchard will display the figures which she paints a range of eerie colours in three chambers within the Fondazione Claudio Buziol overlooking the Grand Canal.

Traditionally a painter, Millar has made three-dimensional works that force the viewer to interact. The largest piece in her exhibition will "bulge and intrude" into the viewer's space.

More than 90 countries will be represented at the biennale, which was established in 1895 and runs till November.

Upritchard and Millar's works will be shown at Te Papa in Wellington during February's International Arts Festival.

Creative New Zealand spent $650,000 on the pair's entries, with a further $400,000 raised from other sources.

Its biennale commissioner, Jenny Harper, said: "The exhibitions ... make us feel so proud and are sure to create a sensation here in this amazing city."

New Zealand has been represented at the event on three previous occasions the last in 2005 when Auckland artist Merilyn Tweedie's entry, a collection of wire fences, computers and Dalek-like moving sheds called The Fundamental Practice, caused controversy at home.

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