League of nations

‘Are you enjoying the Biennale?’ is a question one is often asked while patrolling the winding paths of the Giardini and the endless rooms of the Arsenale. It is not easy to answer. The whole affair is so huge, so diverse and yet — in many ways — so monotonous. Like the EU, an organisation with which it has something in common, La Biennale di Venezia believes in the principle of subsidiarity. Therefore individual nations are allowed to do what they like within their own pavilions. However, there are also strong homogenising forces at work — so much of what is on view in the national pavilions and elsewhere tends to fall into certain approved categories: notably video art, photography (often rather dull) and messy installation.

Phyllida Barlow, batting for Britain on this occasion, has opted for the last of those. Her exhibition, entitled Folly, has some stereotypical British characteristics. It looks (deliberately) provisional, amateurish and bodged: as if a giant toddler had been presented with a pile of art materials and told to make a full-scale model of a building site.