BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2016 – NATIONAL PARTICIPATION OF AUSTRALIA

In Australia, the pool takes many forms. In the bush, a waterhole, a dam, a billabong; on the coast, a concreted cavity gouged from the rocks over which the surf spills and crashes. Mysterious and familiar, tame and wild, natural and man-made: a pool is where the communal and the personal intersect. The Pool is an exhibition about public space and public debate. It steps outside of the architect-to-architect discourse to shed new light on a familiar, everyday space pregnant with cultural significance for Australia. As an architectural device the pool represents a physical edge but it also expresses a social and personal frontier. This is explored through the narratives broadcast in the exhibition space for which we have selected eight storytellers: Olympians Shane Gould and Ian Thorpe; authors Anna Funder and Christos Tsiolkas; musician Paul Kelly; environmentalist Tim Flannery; fashion designers Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales from Romance Was Born; and Indigenous art curator Hetti Perkins. Their inteviews reveal stories of fulfilment and accomplishment, of segregation and inclusion, of learning from the past and reflecting for the future, all through the lens of the pool. We have designed the exhibition as an assemblage, an abstract composition of architectural elements that reference the myriad inspiring pools across Australia. Our design also responds to the very specific context of the recently opened Denton Corker Marshall-designed Australian national pavilion in Venice: a sharply defined onyx box on the edge of a canal. We invite you to immerse yourself in these stories, to enjoy the pool and to share your own anecdotes with those around you.

"Some of the big permanent pools in the centre went for kilometres and were full of life. But Aboriginal people would never go near them because the water was genuinely the source of life and their prey drank at that water.”

“I like the way that water becomes a collaborator for what I am trying to do; it’s having an intimate understanding of how water will move from your body, what it will sound like and also what it may feel like at that time.”

"I have fond memories of the local pool. I remember the feeling of going into a race, the adrenalin and how nervous I was about competing. Everyone was yelling and screaming for their team colour, it was such a fun, spirited place.”

"All of my favourite pools in this city – whether it’s Brunswick or Northcote, are full of life. They are full of kids jumping in and old women gently paddling in the water. It’s the conversations in the change rooms, it’s alive and I think that’s important.”

"I think the pool is really pivotal for a local community, like a public library. They are the pillars of a community. The library is a place where you can go and dive into knowledge for free and endlessly and in your own time and the pool as well.”

"I love to be around the pool but I don’t need to be in the water. I love the sound of water, the reflection, the play of light. The pool is like an art installation, the light, the sound, the visual appeal of it, the immersiveness of it.”

“That’s how a community is built, when people get together. At the pool, teenagers learn how to relate and how to behave, children see old wrinkly people and young babies. It can really help people understand the community and the world.”

"As you move through life, it seems to be a series of steps into deeper and deeper water. What comes along in life are the things that we don’t know. The things that everyone goes through but are not known until you do it yourself.”

The Pool Creative Directors, Amelia Holliday (from Aileen Sage), Michelle Tabet (from Left Bank Co.) and Isabelle Toland (from Aileen Sage), Australia's youngest and first all-female creative team.