The Fremantle Biennale is a unique art event hosting the best in site-responsive art. Situated in new and found sites within Fremantle (Western Australia), The Biennale presents invited Australian and international artists who respond to and work with the history, landscape and communities that make-up the rich tapestry of Fremantle.
The Fremantle Biennale creates a platform for the development and presentation of nationally and internationally recognised and experimental site-responsive contemporary art practices. Our program promotes cultural dialogues and the exchange of ideas through artworks by local, national and international artists intersecting with our audiences and visitors. The Biennale is a distinct visual arts event that reveals, interrogates and celebrates the cultural, social and historical distinctiveness of Fremantle.
UNDERCURRENT is the guiding thematic premise of the Fremantle Biennale’s 2019 program – a flow of water that moves below the surface of the ocean or a river.
UNDERCURRENT 19 is an invitation to interact with Fremantle through artistic dialogues and place sensitive practice. It encourages the excavation of local myths and the creation of new, visual narratives that articulate the spirit of place. Artworks will augment, enhance, and reveal Fremantle to itself in a renewed reading of place. In a contemporary approach to place, customs, traditions and rituals are metamorphosed by the artists.
UNDERCURRENT 19 encourages artists to enter into a dialogue with the site in a process of subtle research, which involves listening, observing and adapting one’s process to what may arise in response to the enquiry. Artistic responses may reveal hidden layers in the built environment and the natural landscape and draw from historical, fictional, anecdotal or atmospheric readings.
‘UNDERCURRENT 19 is a siren song,
an ongoing conversation,
a cultural manifesto.’