As part of its series of get-togethers in connection with different national pavilions at the Biennale di Venezia 2019, the Cité internationale des arts invites you to come and exchange between artist Angelica Mesiti, the curator of the Australian Pavilion, Juliana Engberg and the Chair of the Pavilion's Selection Committee, Callum Morton (he also represented Australia on its Pavilion in 2007).
"ASSEMBLY opens with the ‘Michela’ machine, a 19th century stenographic machine, modelled on a piano keyboard, which is used in the Italian Senate for official parliamentary reporting to ensure transparency within the democratic process. The machine’s inventor, Antonio Michela Zucco, was originally inspired by musical notation as a universal language.
Angelica Mesiti uses this device to code To Be Written in Another Tongue, a poem by David Malouf, which is then arranged into a musical score by composer Max Lyandvert, and played by an ensemble of musicians whilst performers, representing the multitude of ancestries that make up cosmopolitan Australia, gather, disassemble and re-unite.
In ASSEMBLY, a communal gathering is a means for making those with authority recognize the collective power of ‘the people’.
Angelica Mesiti is one of Australia’s foremost contemporary artists, with an internationally renowned practice that combines video with performance and installation to create immersive environments that require absorption and contemplation. Her practice is focused on diasporic cultures, gestural communication and multi-cultural dimensions through musicality and movement."
Text from the Australian Pavilion
Angelica Mesiti (Australia) was in residence at the Cité internationale des arts in 2009 and 2012. She is represented in France by the Galerie Allen and in Australia by the Anna Schwartz Gallery.