HOME AND AWAY

As I confessed the other day, I like my art to have some element (however vague) of story-telling. Call me a Philistine if you want -- oh, you just did, did you? -- but that's how I am and I'm getting too old nowadays to be apologetic about the fact!

In that post I wrote about the Danish Pavilion's contribution to the 53rd Venice Biennale which, along with the Nordic pavilion, forms The Collectors, an exhibit jointly curated by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset and which combines the work of a diverse group of artists - paintings, photographs, sculptures and installation pieces - are 'staged' to create an 'experience' where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Today, I want to give you a short tour of the Nordic Pavilion, an extraordinary building with living trees growing - Lothórienlike - up through the roof...

For the purposes of this year's Biennale, this has become the sometime home of a mysterious man enigmatically referred to as 'Mr B', it has all the appearances of a expensively appointed bachelor pad and is very Sweedeny-Finnishy in style and decor.

Unlike the Danish Pavilion, this property isn't yet up for sale, but it soon will be, since Mr B clearly won't be having any further use for it...

Inside, we find one or two clues for the tragedy that greets us outside along with Mr B's collection of classic design furnishings...

Incidentally, who is that young man and what does he know about Mr B and his fate?

As can be seen from the far wall, the former owner's collection of art was idiosyncratic and includes a Hockneyesque painting of the very swimming pool in he has met an untimely and regrettable end...

As well as a raunchy collection of the drawings by Tom of Finland among them a rather well-endowed variation on Michaelangelo's David...

And those neatly-framed swimming trophies I posted the other week...

On Mr B's desk, amongst the cigarette butts and cast-aside spectacles, is a carefully ordered arrangement of photos depicting classical Greek and Roman homo-erotica alongside the abandoned drafts of a novel about a gay art collector...

Whatever the pressures on Mr B, eventually they obviously became too great.

Maybe the house itself was the problem - what with two walls made of glass and only one other door that really isn't at all functional...

All things considered, that's what I call a story!

Images: Brian Sibley and David Weeks © 2009 unloaded by flickr.