New Zealand is a relative newcomer to the Venice—our participation began in 2001, with exhibitions by Peter Robinson and Jacqueline Fraser. This year, Simon Denny’s Secret Power is our seventh official presentation. Denny’s show addresses the intersection of knowledge and geography in the post–Edward Snowden world. It investigates new and obsolete languages for describing geo-political space, focusing on the roles played by technology and design. 

The show is split across two sites: one historical, at the heart of Venice; one modern, at its edge. The Renaissance- period Marciana Library in Piazzetta San Marco houses historical manuscripts, maps and globes, and old-master paintings. Here, Denny has created a server room, whose modded server racks double as vitrines, housing material based on selected Snowden slides and on the work of former NSA designer David Darchicourt. The server-vitrines echo the library’s function as a repository for knowledge. The second venue is the arrivals lounge at Marco Polo Airport, where arriving passengers walk across life-size reproductions of the Marciana’s painted ceilings, applied as a ‘skin’ to the floor. 

Opening on 9 May, Secret Power has attracted more press than any previous New Zealand exhibition in Venice, with many commentators calling it a ‘must see’. American publication ARTnews described it as ‘incisive and surprisingly humorous … easily one of the strongest national pavilions in Venice this year’. Virginia Were talked to Secret Power commissioner Heather Galbraith and Secret Power curator Robert Leonard.
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Art News: Heather, as Deputy Commissioner for New Zealand’s two previous Venice exhibitions, can you talk about any differences you’re seeing this time. What is your perception of the buzz surrounding Denny’s show?
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Heather Galbraith: Each New Zealand project has been different, in form, scale, and texture. They have also involved artists at very different points in their careers. Denny is a young artist who has experienced a meteoric rise internationally, and we sought to tap into that. So far, the responses from media, critics, and curators have been overwhelmingly positive. It made so many must-see lists that I lost count!
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Did Secret Power exceed your wildest expectations?
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Robert Leonard: I was expecting a huge success. Interest in Denny has been growing and growing. Venice in 2015 was always gearing up to be a 2001 moment for him, with all his planets coming into alignment. The MoMA PS1 show and the MoMA acquisition were key elements in the build-up.
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Galbraith: My expectations were exceeded. It was not just the numbers (5–6,000 a week, during the first months), but who was coming. During Secret Power vernissage events, like the Frieze launch, it crossed my mind that, if there were some terrible disaster, a large part of the art-world elite would be wiped out.
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Do you think the success this time will impact on New Zealand’s future participation.
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Leonard: Secret Power was a big success. But it’s important for New Zealand not to be overawed by that, not to let that success make everything else seem like failure. The fact is that we always get a lot out of going to Venice. Engaging with Venice has transformed New Zealand art. It’s all good.
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Galbraith: New Zealand is recognised for putting on strong shows at Venice. During the vernissage, I met many people who remembered previous New Zealand pavilions. We have established a profile in Venice, and it’s important that we continue to build on it by returning. The Venice Biennale is 120-years old. This is only our seventh outing. In the scheme of things, we are babies.
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What was the biggest challenge in bringing the exhibition into being?
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Leonard: Logistics. It was a huge, complex, expensive project, installed in difficult venues. It needed to be managed like a military operation.
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Galbraith: There were killer spreadsheets. Big ups to Project Manager Jude Chambers, Project Administrator Cassandra Wilson, and Studio Simon Denny. Denny was a powerhouse during preparation and delivery. His unflagging energy was awesome.
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What is the biggest pleasure in bringing the exhibition into being?
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Galbraith: One of my special moments was seeing how proud Denny’s parents, John and Heather, were. It had nothing to do with art-world politics or achieving our KPIs, but it brought a lump to my throat.
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Leonard: For me, as a provincial antipodean curator, it was amazing to witness the international system—the critics and the curators, the dealers and collectors—responding at full throttle. I felt I was in the eye of the storm. I had one priceless moment. At the opening, someone who wasn’t on the list harangued me saying, ‘But I was personally invited by the curator.’ I said, ‘But I am the curator.’
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Has the fact that Denny’s star is on the ascent made a difference to how his work is being received in Venice?
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Leonard: Of course. Some people have a naive idea of Venice. They assume that if you simply send good art, people coming cold to it will appreciate its quality. But audiences go to Venice with expectations. They are interested in particular artists, and that interest is informed by things they have seen or heard, and by their personal and professional connections. All that informs reception. This year, it went our way. Denny had such strong critical and market support. He was surfing a wave of engagement.
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The Artfacts.net website ranks artists, living and dead, in terms of exhibition and media visibility. Denny is currently at 420. He has the highest ranking of any New Zealand artist. What makes him one of contemporary art’s brightest stars?
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Leonard: The work is distinctive and timely. On the one hand, it’s topical. Denny is involved in Zeitgeist subject matter—ideas and aesthetics the art world is only just catching up with. At the same time, the work has a lot to do with the past—the 1960s. It echoes 1960s obsessions (McLuhanism, computers, media) and conjures with 1960s-art aesthetics (pop, minimalism, and conceptualism). Secret Power makes me think about the connections between our current concerns over Internet mass-surveillance and Cold-War-period anxieties.
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Galbraith: It was hard to do elevator pitches for the project, the threads running through it were so rich and layered. Secret Power is visually commanding, but not easy to digest. The aesthetics Denny works with are not commonly explored within contemporary art—infographics, charts, diagrams, data flows, logos. Some of the imagery is slick; some, frankly, a bit clunky and ugly. This is the visual data that surrounds us, especially online and through corporate Powerpoint presentations.
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With Secret Power, Denny’s starting point was the 2013 Snowden leaks. Denny sees the Snowden slides as important cultural documents—twenty-first-century masterpieces. He said to the Guardian, ‘These images contain a lot of cultural information that we just haven’t been unable to unpack. The attempt with this exhibition is to give people the tools to do that. My skill is as an artist—I’m trying to contextualise this material from my tradition, which is the history of conceptual art.’
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Leonard: Denny was being provocative when he called the Snowden slides masterpieces and when he called David Darchicourt a master, like Titian or Tintoretto. That prompted people to think about the Snowden slides and about David Darchicourt in a different way, but, importantly, it also changed their minds about old-master art. It made them think of Titian and Tintoretto not as masters, but as wage slaves like Darchicourt, as hired hands, illustrators of power. Denny’s comment collapsed the master-slave distinction.
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Robert, you wrote that Secret Power ‘is a complex puzzle. Each element is nested in and reframed by other elements in an expanding allegory, making interpretation potentially interminable. And yet, despite this, Denny gets us close to his ostensible subject—the visual language of western intelligence agencies.’
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Leonard: The show took shape after Denny discovered Darchicourt’s online portfolio and decided to make him a key to the whole project. At the time, I didn’t understand Denny’s fan-boy obsession with Darchicourt. I thought: We already understand the big-picture political issues around the NSA without investigating the minutiae of its design language, so why take this massive digression through Darchicourt? What does it tell us? But, then, it clicked for me. I saw that Secret Power is not simply about giving us information—information we can get from newspapers, Wikipedia, whatever. It is more about toying with the way that that information is framed and toying with us as subjects, in the process of interpreting it. We trawl through the material in the vitrines—through all this data and metadata—only to realise that our interpretative activity mirrors the NSA’s. The NSA is us.
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In Metro, Anthony Byrt wrote: ‘With Snowden and Five Eyes, Denny was in seriously dangerous political territory, on the biggest stage on the world. Snowden, frankly, is not something you muck around with.’ Given that subject matter, how risky was it choosing this exhibition for Venice?
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Leonard: The project was a brave choice for Creative New Zealand. Denny was addressing national secrets in an official national exhibition. The politics turned off some potential supporters, but engaged others.
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Galbraith: When Denny’s project was selected back in 2013, the Snowden leak was breaking news. We were concerned that it might not still be topical by the time the show opened. We need not have worried. Its relevance only deepened, with all manner of further revelations, including some about New Zealand’s role in Five Eyes. We are fortunate to live in a democracy, where artists can engage with charged subject matter without fear of censorship or overriding pressure from government.
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When the selectors chose Et Al. to represent New Zealand in 2005, they probably saw them as ‘edgy’. But, the press and public reaction was so negative that New Zealand’s participation in Venice was put on hold for two years.
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Galbraith: Et Al. weren’t perceived as edgy at the time of their selection. They were influential senior artists, whose work was held in most major New Zealand art museums. The international response was engaged and positive. It was only at home that there were issues, after the New Zealand media got fixated on the ‘donkey in the dunny’—a work which wasn’t even in the Venice show. The public followed the press.
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In the past, New Zealand’s participation in Venice and public perception of its ‘worth’ has been shaky. It’s much debated among the public, politicians, and the press.
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Leonard: I don’t think it has been ‘much debated’, but I do think Venice has become a soft target for the New Zealand media. General reporters can take pot shots at the artist, at CNZ, and at art in general, without engaging in too much research or analysis. North and South titled their Venice story ‘But Is It Art?’. I doubt that they would title an article on the Rugby World Cup ‘But Is It Rugby?’. That would be silly.
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What are the roles of Commissioner and Curator? Do both have a role in selecting the work or does someone else do that?
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Galbraith: Although I had been Deputy Commissioner in 2009 and 2013, it was no foregone conclusion that I would be Commissioner in 2015—but I was very pleased to be asked. I worked with CNZ Chair Dick Grant and Project Manager Jude Chambers to devise the selection process and choose the selection panel. The panel chose Denny unanimously. As Commissioner, I had to be across every aspect of the project, ensuring its artistic integrity remained, while securing the resources to enable it. I worked closely with the artist, curator, and Project Manager. I also worked with Leigh Melville, Head of the Patrons; Denny’s gallerists; the Biennale office; Cath Cardiff and the communications and media team at CNZ; the international PR company; and Karen Mason and Sarah Farrar at Te Papa.
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Leonard: This time, CNZ invited artist-and-curator teams to pitch projects. Some nineteen were received. From those, they picked Denny’s and mine. This time—as in every other time previously—they picked an ‘artist project’, commissioning a major new work from an artist. People often ask me about the role of the curator in such a project, which is necessarily artist-led, not curator-led. Here, the curator operates as the artist’s sounding board, enabler, and agent. In the future, I think CNZ could consider different kinds of projects, including more curator-led ones.
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Who are you selecting the exhibition for—the public or the art-world power brokers?
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Leonard: That’s a false opposition. I don’t think ‘the general public’ goes to the Venice Biennale. I guess tourists may pop in to a few random things, but the Biennale’s ‘public’ is essentially an informed art-interested one. It includes artists and arts professionals, but also art students and other informed and committed art lovers—not tyre kickers.
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Galbraith: The Biennale audience is also an international one, including, of course, the New Zealanders who attend. That is not to say the audience back home is not important to us—we do try hard to engage them. We work with national media to share the exhibition with New Zealand audiences. This time, we received excellent national print and radio coverage. The New Zealand at Venice website and social-media were also important.
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What can success at Venice mean for an artist’s career and a country’s reputation?
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Leonard: It can mean a lot. We don’t go to Venice as an end in itself—it’s always a stepping stone. The ultimate benefit is not immediate, it’s downstream. Exposure leads to bigger and better things. Denny’s already had offers off the back of Venice.
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Did Denny’s concept for the exhibition change dramatically once he knew where his work would be sited?
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Leonard: Absolutely. The project became site specific. The venues operated like mediums.
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Denny played the two venues off against one another. This added enormous richness to the work.
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Galbraith: The counterpoint they offered became central to the project. But there was more to it. The airport provided a threshold context. It’s a space of passage and transformation, surveillance and security; a space where people are sorted and processed. The library was one of the world’s first public repositories of manuscripts and maps. Its architecture echoed the contemporary data collection and analysis activity implicit in the Snowden leaks.
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These sites are easily the most prominent New Zealand has ever secured at Venice. How important is site for an artist at Venice? Why do you think New Zealand had the pick of the venues this time?
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Leonard: The Marciana is a great location. You couldn’t find anywhere more central. It was perfect for Secret Power, but it would be a bad context in which to present other kinds of projects—no white walls! We got in early and made our initial approach before the 2013 Biennale had even closed. And we used the space in a way it hadn’t been used before. In previous biennales, it had been used as part of the Museo Correr complex. Its visitors got to see what was installed there. But, we organised it so visitors could enter directly from the Piazzetta, the Marciana’s front door, which emphasised the specificity of the Marciana and its history. It also meant people could visit for free. As for the airport, I don’t think anyone had ever thought to use it before. And, now that Denny has made it his own, I doubt others will. It’s been done now.
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Why is it so important for New Zealand to be at Venice? And what has our participation achieved—both for individual artists and for New Zealand as a whole?
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Leonard: Venice is the biggest, oldest, and most important biennale. And it’s the only one of significance that still has national representation. We may have our artists picked by curators for other biennales, but we can’t count on it. And, even if we do, we have little say over what is shown and how it is shown. But, at Venice, participating countries have some agency regarding how their art is presented. They are involved. That’s huge.
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Will the funding change? Will there be more money?
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Galbraith: I believe CNZ funding will remain consistent, but there could be stronger support from other individuals and organisations as part of a public-private partnership.
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This year, Australia opened its first national pavilion in the Giardini. Is there a chance New Zealand will ever have its own pavilion, or is this not an aspiration? Is it an advantage to have a national pavilion? Is there is a loss of opportunity and flexibility?
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Leonard: It wasn’t Australia’s first national pavilion—they’ve had one in the Giardini since 1987. But their Philip Cox building was only supposed to be temporary. This year, they knocked it down and built a more permanent one–designed by Denton Corker Marshall–on the same site. After Korea built its pavilion in 1995, there’s been no land in the Giardini for other countries to build on. New countries had to develop off-site pavilions. However, this year, many countries took up long-term leases on redeveloped spaces in the Arsenale, making off-site national pavilions less prominent overall. There are pluses and minuses to having a permanent pavilion. Denny certainly took New Zealand not having one as an opportunity. He said, if he had represented Germany, he would have had to use the German pavilion; he couldn’t have used the Marciana and the airport. In short, he couldn’t have made Secret Power.
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[IMAGE: Simon Denny Modded Server-Rack Display with Some Interpretations of Imagery from NSA MYSTIC, FOXACID, QUANTUMTHEORY, and Other SSO/TAO Slides 2015]