Assembly

Angelica Mesiti’s exhibition Assembly opens with the Michela machine, a 19th century stenographic machine, modelled on a piano keyboard, which is used in the Italian Senate for official parliamentary reporting to ensure transparency within the democratic process. The machine’s inventor, Antonio Michela Zucco, was originally inspired by musical notation as a universal language. Mesiti uses this device to code “To Be Written in Another Tongue,” a poem by David Malouf, which is then arranged into a musical score by composer Max Lyandvert, and played by an ensemble of musicians whilst performers, representing the multitude of ancestries that make up cosmopolitan Australia, gather, disassemble and re-unite. The Australia Council for the Arts announced Angelica Mesiti’s exhibition for the Australian Pavilion at the 58th Biennale di Venezia will be a multi-screen installation titled Assembly. One of Australia’s most celebrated and internationally profiled contemporary artists, Angelica Mesiti works across video, performance and installation. Mesiti has developed a practice characterised by large-scale video and sound works. She is known for using cinematic language and performance to explore stories of the individual and the collective. Australia has been represented at the Venice Biennale since 1954 by many distinguished contemporary visual artists. The Venice Biennale provides Australian artists with critical international coverage, exposing them to key new audiences, markets and contexts. The Venice Biennale 2019 sees artistic team, Angelica Mesiti and Juliana Engberg representing Australia at our pavilion in the Giardini.

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Giardini

Venice, NY