Privacy Policy<\/a><\/p>\nWednesday<\/p>\n
The South Korean painter and sculptor Lee Ufan tells me he\u2019s in his \u201cshrinking phase\u201d. The term \u201cshrinking\u201d, the interpreter explains, comes from a Japanese word that relates to air being released from a balloon, and doesn\u2019t translate perfectly to English. Lee will be celebrating his 90th birthday soon and I can\u2019t stop staring at his hands. They press together in a diamond shape, his middle finger slightly bent, perhaps double-jointed. Occasionally they open, like he\u2019s offering something, then mesh back together. His hands are weathered and old in a manner that suggests worldliness and wisdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get older, you start getting very anxious,\u201d Lee explains in an anteroom of the San Marco Art Centre, where his show is located, \u201cmaybe your death is closer. You feel powerless \u2026 But when you accept that this is your shrinking phase, you can start rethinking your past in a more relaxed way, [with] a different perception of time.\u201d Lee\u2019s curator, Jessica Morgan, is tipped to be the next Tate director.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
______________________________<\/p>\n
A middle-aged man in a suit and tie waits at the entrance of the Giardini with a sandwich board that reads in capitals: \u201cI\u2019m waiting for my love.\u201d He\u2019s done this before at Art Basel and at Art D\u00fcsseldorf.<\/p>\n
______________________________<\/p>\n
Lubaina Himid is a painter and Turner prize winner. As Britain\u2019s representative artist, she has an extremely packed schedule. We meet for a chat in the office of the pavilion where her work \u2013 large-scale paintings of black tailors, chefs and gardeners \u2013 is on display. Accompanying the paintings is a soundtrack in which the noises of a summer\u2019s day are gradually invaded by insects. Himid\u2019s hands move around more than Lee\u2019s. Sometimes, they look as if they\u2019re cupping an invisible orb. I ask what it\u2019s like being asked to put forward some ambient notion of Britain or British national identity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Lubaina](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_568090440318a921653bdfc0610a67c0d2c4f04f.jpg\")
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Lubaina Himid at the British pavilion<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure \u2026 would you ask Antony Gormley the same question?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think I probably would.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you? OK. Well, I don\u2019t think Cathy Wilkes [the Northern Irish sculptor chosen for the pavilion in 2019] took any notice at all of the fact that it was Britain. She made a project. She put it in this space, and you can take it or leave it. I think you can take it on or you can decide not to take it on. I think it\u2019s important for me to take it on, because those issues of \u2018Why are you here?\u2019, \u2018When will you go home?\u2019 have been with me all my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Himid has lived in Britain for 70\u00a0years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m like the queen,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve\u00a0seen a lot of prime ministers come and go. I\u2019ve seen policies come and go. I\u2019ve seen football champions\u00a0come and go. I understand the place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recently, Himid has been grappling with the ironic absurdity of a nation that built itself on maritime colonialism being \u201cfrightened of a few boats coming with 40 people in them\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The curator Hans Ulrich Obrist materialises around the biennale like a little childlike figure in a red coat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Alma Allen was chosen by the\u00a0American Arts Conservancy (AAC), appointed by Donald Trump\u2019s state department, to represent the US, his galleries dropped him and a singular question permeated the consciousness of the art world: who is Alma Allen?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Keen to find out, I collar Allen while he\u2019s doing a press tour and ask him. He seems slightly offended.\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s a very hard question for someone to just answer. I\u2019m a self-taught artist. I\u2019ve\u00a0been making work for 35 years \u2013\u00a0maybe not at the centre of\u00a0anyone\u2019s art world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As it turns out, Allen is concerned with Hieronymus Bosch, physics, the nature of reality, mortality, the inevitability of \u201cthe portal into the unknown\u201d, worldly chaos and sea creatures (he\u2019s been snorkelling quite a bit recently).\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Miles](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_34fb9ce5d08d5fe0ec35d6b576e428b0848c9a89.jpg\")
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Miles Ellingham interviewing Alma Allen at the US pavilion<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a stressful run-up to the biennale for him; he\u2019s only had about a few months to prepare roughly 10 new pieces. He works mainly with sculpture. I remind him\u00a0that fellow sculptor Anish Kapoor called for the US to be excluded this year. Allen feels he\u2019s been unfairly attacked personally, which makes him sad, and his sadness is expressed to me,\u00a0somewhat confusingly, in terms\u00a0of sea creatures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is obviously very political, and everyone has their little corner,\u201d he says. \u201cLike the little\u00a0sea creatures born on the same\u00a0little rock, fucking with each other, angry at each other \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
So, Kapoor has made you feel like a sea creature?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it\u2019s not that [Kapoor] made me feel like a sea creature \u2026 His work is boring. His work is clinical and formal. I don\u2019t fucking care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I keep trying to find out who exactly commissioned Allen at Trump\u2019s AAC but no one seems to know. He doesn\u2019t either.\u00a0<\/p>\n
______________________________<\/p>\n
The South African artist Gabrielle Goliath made a work that grapples with the levelling of Gaza but it was withdrawn in January by her country\u2019s conservative minister of sport, arts and culture, Gayton McKenzie. The work, Elegy, featuring\u00a0a single, haunting note, sustained by a revolving queue of performers, has instead been installed, in protest, at the Chiesa di Sant\u2019Antonin. Goliath felt bereft when she first heard about the cancellation, which she sees as a \u201cgross violation of freedom of expression\u201d and a dangerous precedent for censorship. She agrees\u00a0that she does hear Elegy\u2019s note in her dreams.<\/p>\n
______________________________<\/p>\n
Can mankind survive on canapes alone?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I hit my wall at the Metropole hotel during a drinks reception for London-based artist Alvaro Barrington. Exhaustion creeps in and the booze plateaus. A terrible, forlorn tiredness sweeps and doesn\u2019t let up. I listen to people discuss where they met: S\u00e3o Paolo, Mexico City, New York, Berlin. A woman does her makeup, staring at\u00a0her reflection in an empty frame. I\u00a0push through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Rialto bridge. Selfie-land. The\u00a0evening sun turns Venice gold. Even with the tourist accoutrements, the cityscape is still pretty enough to make you laugh out loud. When a gondola is finished, after years of expert artisanal craftsmanship, a little party is thrown for it. There are repairs in progress at the water\u2019s edge because, back in December, a woman hijacked a delivery boat laden with Christmas presents, but didn\u2019t know how to drive it, and only got a few metres down the canal before crashing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The British pavilion party is notoriously boozy. It\u2019s held in a large courtyard next to the basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. There\u2019s no food. People approximate some uncomfortable middle ground between schmoozing and dancing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Outside the Baltic party at the Palazzo Zeno, a large group of people are trying unsuccessfully to get in. My admittance gives me a perverse kick that I distrust. I stand a while by the door, watching people\u2019s reactions as they\u2019re turned away. Some loiter like pigeons by the entrance. There are canapes at the Baltic party, big plates of ham and treats that make your breath smell. I escape a drunken lecture on the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein and flee to a dysfunctional bar in San Marco. Then I faint in a sandwich shop on the way home, probably due to stress or exhaustion. Everything goes black and I come to with a bruised shoulder, staring up at a concerned student who slaps my face and calls out: \u201cMi scusi, signore!\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_9be0bf1f86a0416e0efb8c439f39fb9ca0112574.jpg\")
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The Lee Ufan exhibition in the San Marco Art Centre<\/p>\n
Thursday\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spirits are high at the opening of Isabel Nolan\u2019s show, Dreamshook, at the Irish pavilion. The room is filled with chatter and Aperol spritz, and an enormous, colourful tapestry depicting the dreams of a 15th-century Venetian publisher called Aldo Manuzio. Nolan\u2019s still breathless from the Harper\u2019s Bazaar breakfast she attended this morning. People wander up to her and smile warmly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other side of the Arsenale, Israel\u2019s pavilion does not share the same air of jubilation. The artist Belu-Simion Fainaru sits disconsolately behind a desk. His work is a pool of water with sprinklers rigged to make little ripple shapes on the surface. He bemoans the fact that the biennale has turned into a miniature UN and finds criticism of Israel\u2019s participation hypocritical because people aren\u2019t saying the same of Iranian art.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Everyone is hungover. At the Palazzo Caboto, sitting on a sofa in\u00a0a\u00a0replica Somali living room constructed by the poet Warsan Shire in the biennale\u2019s first Somalian pavilion, I consider my own hangover, watching the boats pass by outside the window. Today has a special, polished currency, as if Venice is trying to pretend that it is too good to be true. The world\u2019s oldest, most meticulously constructed fairground\u00a0becomes especially beautiful once you learn how to look at it. How could I have fainted like EM Forster\u2019s Miss Honeychurch? What\u2019s the matter with me?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The performance artist Miet Warlop and I smoke fags in a little shed behind the Belgian pavilion and ash them into an empty bottle of prosecco. I like Warlop; she has the punky, throwaway readiness of a proper European artist. Today, her performances have been called off after one of her colleagues almost blacked out. The work demands intense labour. It\u2019s loud. People smash things. Shout. Exert themselves. I ask Warlop what the\u00a0point of all this is. Why make art\u00a0at all?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Warlop takes a heavy drag on her cigarette, then replies: \u201cBecause I think you can shift things\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Oriol](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_2c959f233fef57386986d8b6569cda164853ab76.jpg\")
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Oriol Vilanova, Los Restos, Spanish pavilion<\/p>\n
The best work of the festival is at the pavilion of the Holy See. A soundscape has been mapped spatially on to the mystical garden of the Discalced Carmelites, part of a 17th-century friary. Each sound work is inspired by the life of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, and composers include Brian Eno, Holly Herndon, Jim Jarmusch, Patti Smith and FKA twigs. Everyone gets their own little private moment in the garden. It\u2019s enough to make you weep.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back to San Giorgio and a party hosted by Benedictine monks celebrating American sculptor Barry X Ball. People have heard Bj\u00f6rk is playing later at the Icelandic party, but they always say that. Three-dimensional printed statues have been placed in the church. In one of them, an adaptation of Michelangelo\u2019s Piet\u00e0 Rondanini, Jesus\u2019s face has been replaced. There\u2019s only one available toilet, which feels in keeping with the asceticism of Saint Benedict. On the\u00a0vaporetto to the mainland, night\u00a0falls and an enormous laser beam is shot into the sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After about an hour, the Irish party runs out of wine, leaving only\u00a0Guinness and Baileys. My stomach now contains prosecco, red\u00a0wine, white wine, Aperol, Campari, Select, tequila, Guinness and Baileys. There\u2019s no food at the Irish pavilion, just a big bowl of crisps and some white bread cut into squares. Annie Mac makes an appearance on the decks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mendes Wood DM gallery boat party has become somewhat infamous; people talk about it in hushed conversations. This year marks the second time it\u2019s been held on a pirate ship. People board at 2am, then the ship sails off into the international waters of late-night permissibility, returning briefly to unload at 3am, then 4am, then 6am. One of the founders appears in a shiny robe at the gangplank and people start forward. \u201cBack! Get Back!\u201d he shouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A seemingly random array of guests are called on board, and the door closes and the boat sails off. For some reason, I\u2019ve been beckoned inside and the rejected crowd shrinks in the distance. Mendes Wood has found a way to max out the Fomo: something about a pirate ship pulling away, carrying your friends with it, elicits a desperation on the shore that several people aren\u2019t used to. Not long after setting sail, I\u2019m dosed with liquid psilocybin and gin under the half-moon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the boat returns at 3am, people are still waiting. More this time. Some know what went down before and how chaotic the boarding process can be, so they seize the night and try to hurl themselves through open windows. A few make it. The rest are screamed away. People argue desperately to let their friends on board but clout means nothing here. We go round again and the mushroom oil begins to peak.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At 4am, I disembark and scurry back to my hotel like a plague rat. The moon reflects in the canals on my way home and the quietness rings in my ears. I\u2019m reminded of something someone said to me on the boat. \u201cIf you write about this,\u201d they told me, \u201cthere has to be some\u00a0part of you that sees value in it. Otherwise, there\u2019s no point; you\u2019re just a bully.\u201d Groping my way up a dark stairwell towards my hotel bed, I realise that Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s performance has gone viral. \u201cSon of\u00a0a bitch,\u201d I think to myself. \u201cIf only\u00a0I\u2019d been there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miles Ellingham spends a lost week at the Venice Biennale Grand Canal, Venice, Italy Miles Ellingham Share Photographs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1897,6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-587742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Grand](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_ee6f38339f62c440e3e309fea61de8c7adbbd409.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/miles_ellingham.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_bbef19d8b0fb128045638ea09944a1615c1d6bdb.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Seaworld](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_4d28a756a5db9431e46a9311cae0063839106c22.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_9b49ed683c5e8d925a2f5c4247d1d7e3998ca83b.jpg\")
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