On Friday morning 4 curators flew back to Manchester and six of us remained in Turkey for another 24 hours.
In the morning we went back to AKM on Taksim Square in Boyoglu to see the Istanbul Biennial exhibition. AKM is a cultural centre and was re-constructed after a fire in the1970s which now, 40 odd years later, faces potential radical refurbishment.
After AKM a few of us moved swiftly on to the show at Karsi Gallery just off Istikal Caddesi which was not part of the Istanbul Biennial but wanted to see some more work by emerging Turkish artists. We saw some really interesting work, mainly video and installation, often with political undertones. Then we moved on to Platform Garanti to see a solo show by Croatian artist Mladen Stilinovic. His work consisted of installation, drawing and video and dealt with issues around economy, referencing Platform Garanti’s previous function of a bank.
After this we went on a much deserved walk through Sultanahmet, from the Blue Mosque to the Grand Bazaar to the Egyptian Bazaar and completed our trip with a meal in the bustling Tunel area.
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Friday was a good day, as you mentioned we got to do a bit of sightseeing (and stationary shopping), and we went to see the exhibition ‘Burn it or not’ at the AKM which for me was the highlight of all the exhibitions that we went to see during that week. AKM is a modernist state building for performing arts, the exhibition dealt with the theme of political relationships to architecture which was really fitting given context of the situation. In contrast the exhibition ‘Entre-polis’ at Antropo no.3 to me seemed to be to be quite woolly with sections of the exhibition dealing with such things as mankind’s shaping of the world, war, protests, virtual landscapes and belief systems; these are very relevant to what is happening in the world at the moment, but I felt that ‘Burn it or not’ was much more concise and coherent so that I came away from the exhibition with more much rounded thoughts on the ideas. The use of the mixing of sound of the artworks with audio worked better as well and I liked the way that of parts of the architecture were used as features within the exhibition such as the stair wells as mini cinemas and also the way that Tomoko Yoneda’s images of interiors and people had sofas placed near them (or vice-versa) allowing for the mirroring of what was happening inside and outside of the photographs. Considering the strong personality of the building the exhibition wasn’t overwhelmed by it and I thought that there were some good examples of exhibiting in a non-gallery space.
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