Venice. August 19

After another lovely breakfast served to us by our equally lovely B&B host, we set out to catch the Vaporetto to the Venice Biennale 2015: All The World’s Futures. Elise was super excited for this as it’s a total art dream. She’d seen the Architecture Biennale in 2012 and it was great, so this would be another level amaze. There are two main venues; Giardini and Arsenale, but there are also pavilions scattered around the city for countries not represented in the main venues.
The day was rainy but it made for an interesting view of the city from the Vaporetto. We got to Giardini, bought our tickets and began the begin.

We won’t bore you too much by going into the details of our favourite pavilions as we know that it probably more of an ‘in the moment’ experience, but believe us, it was a pretty fun adventure. Anyway, we have some photos to give you an idea of the feels.
Also, the Australian Pavilion is new and pretty great. This year we were represented by Fiona Hall, which made Elise happy. Her work ‘Wrong Way Time’ is a wunderkammer style installation which if anyone saw Elise’s work in her final year of uni, would understand that this is exactly what she’s into. The work locates and focuses on the meeting point between concerns with global politics, world finances and the environment.

SPAIN. The Subjects. Pepo Salazar, Cabello/Carceller, Francesc Ruiz and Salvador Dalí

NETHERLANDS. herman de vries - to be all ways to be. herman de vries

NETHERLANDS

NETHERLANDS

HUNGARY. Sustainable Identities. Szilárd Cseke

HUNGARY

ROMANIA. Adrian Ghenie: Darwin’s Room. Adrian Ghenie

ROMANIA

NORWAY. Rapture. Camille Norment

NORWAY

CZECH Republic and SLOVAC Republic. Apotheosis. Jiri David

URUGUAY. Global Myopia II (Pencil & Paper). Marco Maggi

AUSTRALIA. Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time. Fiona Hall

FRANCE. rêvolutions. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot

GREAT BRITAIN. Sarah Lucas

GERMANY. Fabrik. Jasmina Metwaly / Philip Rizk, Olaf Nicolai, Hito Steyerl, Tobias Zielony

KOREA. The Ways of Folding Space & Flying. MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho

JAPAN. The Key in the Hand. Chiharu Shiota

SWITZERLAND. Our Product. Pamela Rosenkranz 

On our walk to the Arsenale venue we found a place to get a slice of pizza and didn’t even stop to eat it, lots of art to see and very little time! We were separated within the first 10 minutes as Elise took a while to get past the first room, which also meant that unfortunately at 6pm, the Biennale closed before she had reached the end! She was even more devastated by this when Ash told her about some of the cool installations inside. Luckily she got photos!

Bruce Nauman

Katharina Grosse, Untitled Trumpet

Ernesto Ballesteros, Indoor Flights Reminded Elise of her Pa)

Georg Baselitz

Kutlug Ataman, The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci

TUVALU. Crossing the Tide. Vincent J.F. Huang

For dinner we got pizza from a very non-looking pizzeria, and it was amazing. It even had potato chips on it! Not what we expected but very tasty. Of course, we also got some gelato from GROM, which we would later learn is a chain, and for good reason. It’s too delicious to even tell you how much.

We made it back to our lovely B&B just in time to miss the next burst of storms and rain, and cozied up.

Love A&E

Ljubljana to Venice. August 18

We caught a very early bus this morning from Ljubljana because apparently no trains go directly from Slovenia to Venice, even though the drive is only around 2 hours. Having an early bus turned out to be ideal because we had plenty of time to spend the afternoon in Venice. We arrived at the main station not on the island and then caught a train down, then a Vaporetto (water bus) to our accommodation, just off the grand canal. We had booked a BnB and it was so so good. Perfect location plus breakfast included and a lovely room. After checking in we went exploring and had so so so much fun. The whole place is just so beautiful, and Ash couldn't believe somewhere like this existed (Elise has been here before but also lurves it). 5 million pictures, a slice of pizza each and some gelato later we had wandered for a few hours and seen so many canals.

Elise & m9

Cant't hold all my limes (pizza)

We accidentally wandered down a narrow lane to a seemingly private jetty, where we stood, right out in the grand canal on our own having a bit of an oh my god what is life moment. Pretty crazy. This whole place is a dream.

For dinner, we asked the man who worked at our BnB to suggest a restaurant and we went to a really lovely one in a square not too far from our place. We basically got all the Italian foods, pasta, rucola salad, olives stuffed with yum AAANNDDDD tiramisu. Also the man from the BnB was there with his family and we died a little because he had been sitting right near us for a significant time before we had noticed. Oops.

Then to make a great day even greater we got gelati from Doges gelati and sat by a canal enjoying the deliciousness. And then, it poured. Stormed. We got so wet but were having so much fun so who cares? But we were proper wet and both had trouble drying our clothes and shoes for the next few days.

Lighting happens in Venice too folks

Love,
A&E