An Artist’s Hunger: McQueen displays Giardini at the Venice Biennale

As regular readers would know, I’ve been raving about Steve McQueen’s debut film since the moment it set foot in Cannes. Hunger was aesthetically superior to anything I had seen that year and was provactively honest in its depiction of the events that it was based on. McQueen crafted a masterwork with Hunger – which was highly praised because of the camerawork, the film’s perfect pitch and the pacing. So the obvious next question was: what would his next work be? 

As I would learn, McQueen was recognized as an artist well before being known as a feature filmmaker – and his follow up project would be decided well in advance: no sophomore project but instead he was selected to represent Britain at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Having debuted on Sunday and lasting until the 22nd of November, anyone passing through Venice (exact location: Venice’s municipal gardens) can see McQueen’s latest oeuvre, a 40-minute piece called Giardini – the name of the municipal gardens just mentioned above – a sort of backlot of where all the pavilions are set. The project seems to be a two screen set up and is nowhere close to the dark ideas found in his first film. McQueen describes the project best in his own words at the official site from the council: venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org.