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In 2014, the City of Sydney committed to commissioning a major artwork for each of the following three Biennale of Sydney exhibitions, with each remaining in Sydney as a permanent legacy and becoming part of the City Art Collection, every two years.
On Monday 9th May 2016, the Biennale of Sydney and City of Sydney announced that the 2016 Biennale Legacy Artwork Project will be created by Agatha Gothe-Snape, a Sydney-based artist highly regarded for her wide-ranging conceptual practice, and has exhibited her work extensively, both nationally and internationally.
The 2016 Legacy Artwork will be a work developed during the ’20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed’, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal. This edition is the second time the 25 year, jointly-commissioned public art work has been awarded.
The final work will relate to a series of three scored walks that Gothe-Snape is presenting with dancer and choreographer Brooke Stamp during the course of the Biennale. The performances will take place along a pathway extending from Speakers’ Corner in the Domain to Wemyss Lane, Surry Hills.
Titled Here, an Echo, Gothe-Snape describes the work as a ‘choreography for the city’ – a score, performance and document – and these experiences will inform the development of a number of short phrases… Part of the final physical work is also an extended process of research and conversation, with other artists, colleagues, and the general public as well as stakeholders in and around Wemyss Lane, including building owners, tenants, residents and random passers-by. Accumulating as an archive of stories, observations and responses, Gothe-Snape will translate these into phrases which will be applied directly onto the walls of the laneway, introducing a sense of whimsy and intrigue to a site that might not otherwise attract notice.
Agatha Gothe-Snape said: “I am so excited and honoured to be producing a work that responds to the ambiences of Sydney. To spend the time in the streets, laneways and public spaces of the city listening to its utterances is thrilling. I hope to produce a work that is generated by the city itself, and available to all users – residents, workers, tourists and artists – as a trace that relates to the past, present and future of Sydney.
“I believe art has a vital role in any city, particularly in public places, to create more space – whether that is rhetorical, social, emotional or political. Art gives audiences an important opportunity to ask themselves and those around them questions about who they are and what they believe in. I hope Here, An Echo can offer such spaces of reflection, contemplation and questioning in both its production throughout the 20th Biennale of Sydney and materialisation as a permanent work in Wemyss Lane, Surry Hills,” added Gothe-Snape.
Stephanie Rosenthal, Artistic Director of the 20th Biennale, describes how Gothe-Snape’s work will act to “subtitle the site, with carefully chosen phrases serving as footnotes to the life of the city. Together these form an echo of the histories, voices and activities of both the streetscape and the interior life of buildings. Gothe- Snape is an important artist of our time using a process and language which couldn’t be more contemporary. Here, an Echo will cast a new light on this inner-city location, using language to question our relationships to one another, to art, and to the contexts and histories in which all these are situated.”
Agatha Gothe-Snape. Photograph: Aimee Crouch
Agatha Gothe-Snape with Brooke Stamp, Physical Doorway (Three Ways), 2016, digital print on mesh PVC banner., installation view at Cockatoo Island for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney
