We kicked off with the
Palazzo Grassi for Pinault's latest collection unveil. Bumping into Interview's
Alex Gartenfeld on the way we swept around the space (garnering a handshake from Monsieur Pinault himself) enjoying the
Loris Greaud, Fredrich Kunath and
Joana Vasconcelos works and not enjoying the sea of press photographers who kept ambushing us to pose as interested viewers. TimeOut's Ossian Ward and Bon's Freire Barnes legged it to the Giardini while we hit the Grassi brunch in the most beautiful garden in Venice. Took a Pinault taxi to Punta Della Dogana to pay hommage to Ed Keinholz' Roxy's before passing by the Bauer where we found
Dave Dorrell in search of John Giorno. We had our first bellinis with him on the terrasse (alongside Yorgo Tloupas and Alex Duve) before heading to the
Michael Somoroff and August Sander show off San Marco (followed but a delicious dinner at the Danieli). A sweaty dance to
Theophilus London at the Flash Art party was followed by a relatively low key Bauer night with
Matthew Stone DJing. Chatted to
Terence Koh about the week ahead and headed for bed before prosecco took control.
Ran to Giardini in the am - I could go on about how great
Thomas Hirschhorn's health and safety nightmare for Switzerland was, or
Mike Nelson's toast to Turkey, or Denmark's freedom of speech group show but where's the gossip in that? The main pavillion was pretty dull bar
Cyprien Gaillard's postcard-beer label collages, Haroon Mirza's sound works and especially Pippilotti Rist's genius psychedelic kitsch video collages in tacky gold frames. Post disco nap we headed to the party of the week - Francois Pinault's dinner on San Giorgio Maggiore. Joined
Geoff 'In Venice' Dyer and Rebecca Wilson for Aperol Spritz on the private shuttle Vaparetto and queued up for a swift entry with Jeff Koons, Sophie Calle, Salma Hayek, Francois Mitterand and few small names I forget. 'The most beautiful party ever created in the world' (officially) was spent eating cheese and drinking Rustica Prosecco with the beyond lovely Michael Stipe and
Thomas Dozol amongst 600 candles in a monastic garden. We left to try to the so-so Whitecube party where Jefferson Hack, a Serbian prince and the usual suspects from London were drinking in honour of Christian Marclay. The Bauer seemed a better option and overpriced glasses of prosecco were consumed with a dapper Cyprien Gaillard, supercool Jack from
Salem and Jamie Shovlin until 5am...
Refusing exhaustion, as June 2 was the big day.
Orientale and Modernikon in the day, grab a random pizza with Jefferson, enforced disco-napping and then on to the Palazzo Fortuny before the crowds to see the exhibition as artwork that never fails to please.
Garance Dore, Alexandra Senes, Jefferson Hack and
Seana Gavin join to the Fondazione Prada (missing Peggy Gugg's which was a sad loss as usually so lovely). 1200 people were squeezing into the 200 capacity venue. My fashion-connected compadres squeezed to the front where a frightening 50-something in a denim hat decides to scream at me for no obvious reason shouting 'stronza' at the top of her lungs which I responded with a calm zen like loving responses which probably annoyed the lunatic Milanese gallerist even more. Health hath no fury like a badly dressed menopausal woman... The art was impossible to see so we headed to Hugo Boss's stunning garden party for
Allora and Calzadilla, dropped into
Kemel Mennour'sparty in honour of Siglit Landau representing Israel in the Scuola di Rocca (newly named the School of Rock) before ending up dancing to someone from 2 Many DJS and Lucky PDF til 3am at the Anton Ginzburg/Grandlife hotel party with Gary Baseman's dolls. End by heading past Gavin Brown's piccolo mondo party to the dregs of the Bauer for
Commerical Break to see friends from
POST do their thing (with a touch of help from Dasha Zhukova and Neville Wakefield) but decide not to bother with the door nazis.
The morning after the numerous nights before discover my friend has been put in prison for stealing a gondola - and stayed there for 36 hours. Something that gave the next few days a slight touch of stress to say the least.... but we still manage to fit in art while attempting to contact international consulates. Haunch of Venison's brunch involved serious laughter over dirty dirty stories from
Jamie Shovlin and
Jon Nash. Lisson's beautiful brunch that followed was amazing. Christian Jankowski enthused over his forthcoming baby with
Pinchuk Prize nominee Jorinde Voigt.
Haroon Mirza had yet to hear he had won the silver lion prize and was in relaxed mode. Alex Logsdail was in fine form and the salmon tartare was mouthwatering. Did the Arsenale (highlights Rashid Johnson, Christian Marclay's ever addictive Clock, Urs Fisher, Elad Lassry and Haroon Mirza's installation) did the Interview party (Venice has obviously become a mecca for all publication parties) and look at Cyp's photos of Mark Gonzales skating the streets of Venice earlier that day. Drink the Bauer dry before 5 mins at the Le Baron party, where Olympia Le Tan thought it was sexy to look like a toddler with her dress tucked into her underwear...
Head to the police to break my friend out of jail (to no avail though it did make the cover of the Venice Times) and give up and head for the beach (where we hear of my friend's overdue release). That night was the surprise party of the week for '
one of a thousand ways to defeat entropy' a collateral show co-curated by
Nadim Samman and Alexander Ponomarev. It felt like the best Russian wedding in the world - and we were the bridesmaids. Those au fait with Russian Hello! may have a clue re the couture clad clientele. We race through the streets - one of our party swinging her bag above her head like a banshee and overhear passer by say 'Oh. Is it the biennale?' 'No' their friend responds. 'Thats just how the English enjoy themselves'...