Hasta La Ideas

Still from Giardini 2009 © Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen represents Great Britain at the 2009 Venice Biennale with a new film, Giardini. You can see a few excerpts from the work here, in an interview on the British Council site, or click through for some stills, which look rather beautiful in their own right…

Still from Giardini 2009 © Steve McQueen

The idea for situating the film in the Venice Giardini, the gardens that contain the thirty permanent pavilions used during the Biennale, came to McQueen when he was in the city for the 2007 festival.

The British Pavilion is a “beautiful building… monumental”, he says in the interview on the British Council site, but also has a “human element… a human character”.

Still from Giardini 2009 © Steve McQueen

Of the new film McQueen says: “There is an everydayness about it, it’s not exotic or foreign, but specific to the Giardini and to Venice.”

Still from Giardini 2009 © Steve McQueen

Still from Giardini 2009 © Steve McQueen

The Guardian’s Charlotte Hingins spoke to McQueen about the film in an interesting piece, here.

Steve McQueen: Giardini, Venice Biennale 2009.
Photography by Prudence Cuming
© The British Council
Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris; Thomas Dane Gallery, London

More on the British Pavilion at britishcouncil.org/venicebiennale.