EIGHTEEN: WELCOME to Australia//3 days around Sydney Biennale

17th Sydney Biennale, The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a precarious age

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Paul McCarthy, Ship of Fools, Ship Adrift I, 2009, Pier 2/3

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Sydney, 2010

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Rohan Wealleans, He with Glands of Wasp, detail, 2009, Cockatoo Island


photo Katya Grokhovsky, 2010, Sydney

photo Katya Grokhovsky, 2010, Sydney

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Shen Shaomin, Summit: Mao, 2009, Cockatoo Island


photo Katya Grokhovsky, Friendship?, Sydney, 2010

photo Katya Grokhovsky, 2010, Sydney, for your entertainment

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Cai Gou-Qiang, Inopportune: Stage one, 2004, Cockatoo island


photo Katya Grokhovsky, 2010, Sydney Tourist

photo Katya Grokhovsky, for your entertainment : part 2, 2010

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Roxy Paine, Neuron, 2010, in front of MCA, Sydney

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Slave Pianos, 2009, Cockatoo Island

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Angela Ellsworth, Seer Bonnets, Installation detail, 2009, MCA Sydney


photo Katya Grokhovsky, Cockatoo Island, Sydney Biennale, 2010

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Shen Shaomin, Summit: Lenin, 2009, Cockatoo Island

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Shen Shaomin, Summit: Fidel Castro, breathing still, 2009, Cockatoo Island

photo Katya Grokhovsky, Kader Attia, Kasbah, 2009, Cockatoo island


photo Katya Grokhovsky, Botanical Gardens, 2010, Sydney

drrrriiink in moderation: sings the man, Australian flag proudly behind him: welcome to OZ.
it'll hurt .I'll bleed. badly. scars? for life perhaps? need I feel everything so bodily, inside me? Angela Ellsworth's installation at the MCA: pearl pin bonnets: I watch on in silence: imaginary blood trickling down my face : Louise Bourgeois' bronze sweaters and red ink drawings, a vase with a dead bouquet of flowers inside it, stands lonely near her works.Christian Jankowski, Bill Viola, Biennale ferry to the Cockatoo Island, a former convict site. Oh Australia. I have never seen your convict sites. I want to learn. I am thirsty for your true dark veiled history, my adopted one. Russian aes+f group, Love it. A Requiem for Capitalism in digital format and 9 channel circular installation, Happiness Island is being built as we speak: yes, it is actually happening to all of us: enslaved hanged convict piano, bringing culture?, cars under the ceilings, fireworks fireworks, tin roofs of the poor, see? Deeper and faster I sink into fearful contemplation: the world is f.u.c.k.e.d.....Yvonne Todd's uncanny fake-toothy staged photo-performances, Yayoi Kusama singing her sad song on video, surrounded by mirrored dots and obsessions, she sings about antidepressants and greatness? fresh ocean air fills my lungs. Pier 2/3: Paul McCarthy's Ship of Fools is going nowhere and is adrift in the fatty over-consumption of empty idolisation of our age: hooray hooray hooray, Thank you Paul. We are: mentally ill-advised, deadly and overpriced. Welcome to here. Acrylic white paint on Aboriginal skin. Take a picture, take a picture: Just for you, Darling....

FOURTEEN: 31 May 2010//Thank you and Thank you: LOUISE BOURGEOIS//MARINA ABRAMOVIC//

stillife, photo Katya Grokhovsky, 2010

...New York City: on May 31st 2010, Memorial Day, Louise Bourgeois, 98, dies in hospital , as Marina Abramovic ends her now infamous performance in MOMA. Fate, Electricity and hope in the heated city. Second week in New York. Study trip. Consumed by art wholly and forever. Artoholic? absolutely. Humanist? perhaps. emotionalist? possible. sucker for tears? Marina provides and Thank You, Marina. Thank you, Louise. Putting my hand on my heart mentally, in re-enactment of Marina's gesture, I Thank these two artists, from yes, the bottom of the barrel of my heart, which, as I realize, once again, whilst observing Marina's tears and tasting my own, exists. Forever and behold.R.I.P Louise.


stillife, 2010, photo Katya Grokhovsky

Black Russian bread sandwiches, salami and avocado, Chelsea: 19th street, New York Arts Program dorms, 29th street, heat and nauseating smell of decay shooting up my nose, top bunk bed and fear of falling, mussels in coconut milk, Happy hour at Half-King bar, Angel Otero's studio and beer on the roof, gold paint and assistants....

Saya Woolfalk's studio and hundreds of pages of research: work hard, Saturday at Franklin Furnace, Brooklyn's 5th avenue, 2 apples for one dollar, pumpernickel bagel and 2 eggs, blueberries, mango and raspberries, pomegranate juice and vanilla rum, stories of old New York and Establishment of our holly art world: Tino Sehgal, this is propaganda, 2002, Polly Apfelbaum's studio: sequined scraps on the floor, skeptical optimism and finding the fuck you....

bad painting all around, teeth hurt by bad painting....

parents on skype, plans for San Francisco, overwhelmed, art overdosed and happily exhausted. Coffee and water, crepe with smoked salmon, shrimp salad and brushetta, mocchiato....I don't eat hot dogs from the stands on the corners of new york, cabana outpost and extra chicken burrito, thank you, passer-by attendance of Saturday mess at catholic Chelsea church, wishing for religion....art, Outsider porn: touching elbows with John Waters, Chelsea openings, Chinatown, 3 dollar soup and East village, free drinks, Vernita Nemec's stories, hot sticky nights and smelly streets, the walls are cooler than the sheets, The Kitchen and Baryshnikov Art centre: two part dance performance, bus transfer during intermission, only in new york: consumed and anxious, extreme shoulder and neck fatigue, bad pillow, french toast and rude awakening by fire alarm on Sunday morning, who done that?

stillife, photo Katya Grokhovsky