Bulls and a tank in the top half dozen at Venice Biennale

So what sort of impact has Michael Parekowhai’s exhibition “on First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” at the Venice Biennale had and is he now part of the international art scene.

It is interested to compare the reporting on his work with the reception of the work of other countries.

Lithuania received the fourth prize at this years Biennale, an "Honorable Mention” for its show titled "Behind the White Curtain” by Kestutis Kuizinas artist Darius Miksys. There are several mentions in the media about the fact that the show is on as well as repeating the press release, but there are no editorial mentions or reviews or analysis in any papers.

On the other hand there were several mentions about New Zealand and Michael Parekowhai.

“The Independent” of London had a couple of articles on the show. The first by Rob Sharp was about the physical nature of the exhibition and he was impressed by “the lengths taken to transport the contents of the New Zealand pavilion to its base at the Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore, a late Gothic Victorian Palace on the Grand Canal.”

“In the gardens, artist Michael Parekowhai is currently exhibiting an intricately carved red Steinway concert grand piano and two concert grand pianos fabricated in bronze, each of which supports two cast bronze bulls. The two bronze pianos travelled by sea, I'm told, from New Zealand across the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal and then on to Italy. It took them nearly two months to travel "around 13,566" miles”

A later piece also in “The Independent” was more analytic in its approach. Charles Darwent had the artists work as one of his top five shows, along with the England (Mike Nelson), the US (Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla), Scotland (Karla Black) and France (Christian Boltanski).

He described the installation as “tenderly muscular, its objects tending to the large – a big, red piano in the foyer, a sculpted bouncer in the garden – although not always. A pair of Crocs in the grass are of bronze, modelled on those of the artist's little brother, dead at 12; the bouncer is another brother. Parekowhai and his siblings appear as lizards in the lid of a vintage Steinway on which music students play. Four wooden lizards, the living, are on one side of a strut, the fifth is on the other.”

“The piano, a re-exported import, has been carved with Maori decoration, some real, some of a Europeanised style made for tourists. The carving, at the artist's insistence, was done by the carpenter who did the piano in the film The Piano. Parekowhai's work meditates on the wash of history – on migration and re-migration, the morphing of art, on the impossibility of seeing culture as sharp-edged. His work sits nicely with Mike Nelson's, its homelessness makes it at home in Venice.’

There were a couple of other mentions about New Zealand with “The Financial Times” noting the fact that the exhibition did not open until it had had its Maori blessing.

The important Tate Gallery online blog mentions a dozen artists including Michael Parekowhai’s installation, “The carved Steinway grand piano is played throughout the Biennale. Parekowhai says ‘performance is central to understanding the work, because music fills a space like no object can”.

There have been a number of articles in the New Zealand press and numerous local blog articles but there are also several international posts including some from local Italians.

There have also been several Youtube posts mainly featuring the piano being played.

While most countries get well reported in their own media it is rare for other countries to get major mentions in the daily press. It is generally the new and unusual which gets reported and why most years at the biennale it is the kapa haka group which got to feature of international television.

The most significant writings about the Biennale will occur overt the next two to three months as the specialist art magazines begin to dissect the exhibitions and the senior commentators, curators and dealers make statements about who may be the artist who get selected for further international shows as well as art fairs.

It was clear from the number of curators and commentators who attended the New Zealand Pavilion that Michael Parekowhai’s work attracted a wide section of the international arts community. He is seen as dealing with similar issues and using similar methods of workings as many other significant artists. He had captured many of the political and social ideas around nationalism, cultural expression and the interventionist practices of the artist.

This can be seen when comparing his work with that of artists from other countries, particularly those where objects and sound are combined

There were similarities with the US Pavilion where artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have several performance art works inluding one where for fifteen minutes every hour a athlete runs along the tracks of an upturned tank. The rumble of the (real) tanks engines a counter to Parekowhai’s music playing Steinway.

Parekowhai’s exhibition also has connections with some of the work in the show “In Praise of Doubt” at Punta Del Dogana notably a work by the American Edwatd Keinholz His "Roxys", made over the period 1953 – m1961 is a complete 1940’s lounge interior produced in absolute detail which includes strange mannequin figures. A musical soundtrack binds the work together creating a surreal environment.

In the Serbian Pavilion artist Raisa Todosuevic has a series of photographs of performances pieces which have been undertaken over the last decade and which are seen as a way of indentifying and redefining ideas about nationalism.

Hajnal Németh representing Hungary has major installation called Crash. The centerpiece of the installation is a car-wreck totaled in a crash, with an experimental opera playing in the background, telling the reflections of car-crash victims in a sung form.