Best Artists of the Biennale of Sydney 2008
Time Out's staff select the top 20 best Biennale artists. Be quick - it all ends this Sunday
By Nick Dent
1 William Kentridge Cockatoo Island
Hands down, Kentridge provides the smartest, most insightful, most brilliantly staged works in the Biennale. The South African artist's beautiful charcoal animations, projected on walls and on a rotating cylindrical mirror, address Sovietism and human responsibility. William, you were really something.
2 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller Pier 2/3
Sydney was shaken and stirred by the 100 speakers belting out their sound installation ‘The Murder of Crows'.
3 Lene Berg Cockatoo Island
Berg explores perception and reality by taking over an entire house high up on the island and filling it with provocative text and cut-outs. Love the room turned into a camera obscura.
4 Mike Parr Cockatoo Island
Fourteen classic video art pieces screen in a building as dirty, smelly and repugnant as Parr's imagination. A wonderful tribute to a truly twisted Australian.
5 Sharmila Samant MCA
Samant's cobras-and-cotton are a cry of anguish for India's exploited farmers.
6 Pierre Huyghe Sydney Opera House
It was only on for one day in July, but we loved the effect of the Concert Hall turned into a forest. It smelled like Bunnings.
7 Vernon Ah Kee Cockatoo Island
Ah Kee's portraits are nice, but we take our hat off to him for signing his name to a dirty, scungy toilet block covered in racist graffiti from the 1970s. Yeah, Malcolm Fraser, you suck.
8 Susan Philipsz Cockatoo Island
A lone woman's voice singing ‘The Internationale' in an empty space simply and beautifully evokes the death of the ideals of revolution.
9 Mark Boulus Cockatoo Island
This critique of the West's exploitation of Africa is the best of way too many video art pieces on the island.
10 TV Moore Cockatoo Island
He made walking through that long dark tunnel even scarier than usual.
11 Lara Favaretto Cockatoo Island
Air tanks on timers gently blow on party whistles. Funny, and sad.
12 Maurizio Cattelan MCA
Um, it's okay, kiddies - that hanging horse is just sleeping
13 Chris Burden MCA
He shot himself in the arm - for art - so just imagine what he'd do if we didn't include him on this list.
14 Yoko Ono AGNSW
Would you have preferred Heather Mills phone you up?
15 Rosemary Laing MCA
Laing's photos of figures flying through space aptly expressed the confusion of many Biennale patrons.
16 Brian Jungen MCA
Native Australian animals made out of luggage. Cute.
17 Emory Douglas Cockatoo Island
Douglas illustrated Black Panther magazines in the 1960s and 70s. That's what we call revolutionary.
18 Richard Bell Cockatoo Island
Hardly subtle, but Bell's film of racist white kids being analysed by an indigenous Sigmund Freud makes its point.
19 James Angus AGNSW
His Bugatti racer skewed at 30 degrees is an impressive portrayal of technology going nowhere fast.
20 Marcel Duchamp AGNSW
A special mention must go to the man (1887-1968) without whom art might still be hung up on aesthetics and high ideals. Sorry, did that sound sarcastic?