Review: Damien Hirst at the Venice Biennale - Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable

everybody Robert dunt founder of our top ten and here we are in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi and this is Damien Hirst's new thing that we're going to go and have a look at churches from the wreck of the unbelievable it's really hot so let's hope it's air-conditioned inside okay so we're just wandering in and it is kind of or inspiring to start with look at the absolutely massive statue that is like I don't know I need two feet high it's a huge giant weird statue thing covered in barnacles reminds me a bit of years ago the Royal Academy only had a giant sculpture there as well um ya know it's uh it's really cool on there's a whip head over there in the corner you can see the word head weird heads kind of cool nice place quite interesting again the giant statue as you wonder can't quite work out how they got it in there and in the corner you can see some pictures of it under the sea or what could be something under the sea but um and of course you got that giant head but it fits into this building okay so inside and there's a giant head here I'm not quite sure whether some of these things they're on Damen hoods or genuine things from the Palazzo Grassi itself there's a picture with giant or the underwater content of his lightly ripped its own head off and then of course those two giant for tea itself yes right up through the center of the gallery which is trying to get a grip on what is actually happening as the massive booklet when I have a look at that in a minute but it's pretty hefty and we'll try and work out what what is real or what is in or what is on Trevanian Hearst exhibition on what's part of this place and stuff he got quite confusing things I guess isn't meant to be confusing like you've got this guy doing this tiny little head out of the ground and then you've got this giant version of the same head over here okay it's not that a quick look at the book and from what it says is 2008 a vast wreckage site was discovered off the east coast of Africa and this was gave credence to fables about a freed slave in the Roman Empire slaves were afforded the opportunity to UM make huge amounts of money and succeed and as a slave neither rumor has it had amassed a huge fortune and neat amassed commissions copies fates purchased in plunder 100 fables treasures now it says this collection is laid submerged in the Indian Ocean for some 2,000 years poor sight discovered in 2008 and now almost a decade after our excavation begins this expedition exhibition brings together the works recovered in this extraordinary find and some of them were still got barnacles on and stuff like that because they're come out of the sea was hard to tell because it is called treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable is whether or not these are real fakes or whether they're things first is invented but I mean that's all quite clever isn't it and I guess it makes you think about the relevance of sieves to seeing galleries but they're real or fake or whether they've been designed or faked up or sold for money anyway it's very interesting I go over leaving the big main hall with the giant statue and we're heading upstairs see what's up here further and there's like on the wall there's like photos of um you see that properly yeah that's the photos of like things that must have been underwater or mental being underwater and there's more videos in there I think if things being recovered from the bottom of the ocean I'm here to go here you got like photos of divers here we go and there's a bit of a chit chat yeah telling you about what's going on in the sea and you can see different things being discovered under the ocean and pulled out of the sea I still can't talk Tower that's real or it's a lot of faked up thing that's what species discovered just whispering a banach is this lives of people watching a film obviously is this gives you a pretty good idea of what's going on you got a lot of um Henry showing the golden things they found under they see way that David has got a little chitchat about it every so often but this giant head I still can't believe I mean I've probably just put these under the sea which i think is actually probably more interesting than if you found them because they all look like things you might have made anyway it's really intriguing probably the first video thing about us at work cool medusahead there's the giant person we're to see now so I spent a summer 2009 nothing insightful service it was playful mouse downs that there was something down there I was quite interesting watching this film because um I seem to be genuine things that are being pulled out of the wreckage but I never soften you seem to get things aren't real like a giant Mickey Mouse being pulled out which my son just bought it working beside me that seems to be a combo potentially a real a nunnery I mean these swords look kind of real then this horse doesn't look real that looks more like a hosta creation in such as I had looks like they make stop the real and the unreal together okay so here we are we're on on the first floor we've just finished watching the film like you say wigs I'm here with Maya my wife find out my son and um we reckoned some of it's sort of real the stuff in the bottom you see in some of its fake because a little giveaways in the film my Hurst saying history or you think of a solid history is just little fragments of information and then you've also got there was a woman saying you've never said kernel of truth in it is interesting but you get the feeling some of this is real and some of it isn't real and some of it's maybe things Hurst buried at sea and wait until they got covered in stuff maybe none is real by the way you've gotta have an incredible amount of money to either dig off or shake the rattle bait shipwreck and place all these things so there's so many confinement so I mean it's quite an extraordinary feat but it is really a really clever and it is actually really interesting the whole point about whether or not these things are real it's a clever and I suppose no off point about the history you think of it's definite whether or not that's real is quite clever as well yes hello this is a good one here so you've got like this giant head being discovered under the sea the photo of the diver and then you've got the giant head itself which it claims here skull of a cyclops groups believe the cyclops ride the land in the distant history responsible for monumental works of masonry such as the lion gate of Mycenae fossils interpretations the bones of mythical beings recorded totemic significance and this convincing replica of skull would have likely be displayed as a real inquiry where anyway you don't know where the hearse and maybe this i can't even tell whether that is real sort of barnacle things on top of it or whether it's actually be known from these sort of carved it's smoldering created by the way you have got an incredible amount of money to pull off this kind of a stunt do stunts bravia a bad term something that's actually pretty cool so here we are in this room where you've got like a picture of a skull of a unicorn and then this sort of hourglass I guess skull of a unicorn so her solids and he made these things it's quite um it's quite cool cuz all exists rather brilliantly with Venice outside his Venice is also full of all sorts of fantastical things designed to keep people and/or of people and this is another thing where it's sort of designed to keep people or one look at this weird sort of Cerberus dog thing with brilliant Egyptian carving on the side I mean it's just um so she quite cool the dog thing but it's it's yet another thing that's sort of unreal but we think it actually makes Hurst's work more more effective set in this fictional world maybe he'd always imagined them in this kind of fictional world gives them sort of legitimizes in this fictional story around them this is cool is like a giant wasn't gonna be like under the sea with giant mollusk things and a giant crab crawling up the side there's no crab and then around the center you've got you've got massive sharp linking out attacking woman's I mean this is just total fantasy that's better so this drifts completely the other way and she's screaming is that shock attack sir so one minute it seems like it could be real next some money it seems completely unreal scene is fiddling with your head the whole time cool thing to walk around that and that woman screaming she's really unhappy check it out and that's my son spotted in the mirror they were pulling out of the C car team figures contemporary ones he's a goofy that's potentially being pulled out to see which of course he couldn't be pulled out of the sea because when that slave out crashed he hadn't been invented on their car teens and then you've got Maui and Babu sitting here so they could have been created either so there is definite things are complete fantasy possibly into me for the rest of it and it isn't really weird frankly to have Venice out of the window because it just makes the whole thing more sort of a faintly authentic tell these things drifting wipers make you think about Venice and obviously like the Doge's Palace ongoing or extraordinary things they've built in there to all people who are going around and you've got the same sort of thing being pulled apart maybe or questioned in here and let there you go there's a Mickey Mouse being pulled out of the sea as if it was a special running from hundreds and thousands of years ago yeah and as you go to this bit you've got more more stuff that couldn't have come out of the sea here is my son just spotted you got a transformer July the transformer you like the transformer here's a transformer this popped out of the sea and you got other things over here am I crazy for make head fighting creatures joint bear little bit heads of the melting crazy Eagle thing and yeah I guess it does make you think about like authenticity of what you see in museums how do you know that we anticipate how'd you know where it comes from you don't really know apart from what you wrote on the walls and it's base is effectively Shane you can fake those things up she's actually quite clever you can effectively fake all those things not quite easily it was interesting it was interesting I suppose authenticity especially for him as he's made some Washington money and of these things is out of saying the work is good it's all the other walls about authenticity and building up especially with contemporary art where there's no objective way of saying if it's good or bad it's all about building up a myth around yourself I space or building up some reason to believe that what you spend is there worthwhile spend if you're buying contemporary art for millions of pounds is a really good one it's on with the gold venturing down the center of the woman with the barnacles and stuff on top but it's really cool and a little sort of weird fruit shines at the side and it's clever it's it's a clever way of making me take all the world much more seriously Alex that's quite cool gun here's why you got another one but he's damien hirst himself isn't it all the barnacles put over himself looks a bit like somebody at Star Trek you like like a Borg well done we come down into this more dark and better and you've got not sure what these are living he's a Queens he's a meant to be queen the relevance of the queen is is that the nurse head on the coin yes see I'm not sure what they say on that I can't quite see and I have a feeling if you look at them more carefully probably work out there's something faked up or tricked inside them as you go through it this is quite interesting as my wife point later that um you've got all these collections of coinage but if you look at the materials they're glass palak ate another minion paints down a million pages MDF silicone Elliott lighting gold and silver so they're not genuine things he actually got the materials on them so these coins are not genuine coins from the bottom of the co-taught but what is quite interesting is when we were in Jordan we were going around a famous site in Jordan Verdun not great description is Indiana James and all those other things that famous line Jordan and there we were being offered coins and we were warned not to buy fake coins so these fake coins are just like fake coins you can find in real archaeological sites then you get a few things like this that look more like real relics that might come out of a see it's hard to tell whether they're real or not but you just can't really how these things are sort of interspersed I mean maybe there's nothing real from that maybe there is I mean this little shuffle looks kind of real and then come over here you've got things that look a bit more real but it's really hard tell whether these things are real or not when you're looking at well suppose that a real exhibition maybe the materials give it some way again a bit more about whether or not that real here we are on the second floor and got like a sort of another thing that reminds me it's like from Star Trek and Borg like things like that was really cool Medusa head in here which is really cool only was made something that one is a fake as it looks exactly like you expect him and used to had to look from the storybooks as a kid but it's like potentially a Rowan family everybody's dad is really good really good Medusa head snakes you got the top of the giant statue lurking in here big shell numbering around I'm a quicker secret touch of the show here you feel like I'll bar donate sorry sorry I'm sorry that's all for touching Michelle already tell it was real from touching it and we head on in see one little bit more the little so a gold creature in the center of it here's another dull boring shining up on their video funny thing about a lot of these things is you 15 they're a bit cheesy I mean you think that's slightly cheesy combos of stuff sort of like bad art nouveau but the whole fake Oh sense them coming out the ocean gives them more reality more credibility more on sense of them being something special as well realize back to here with the wings which is quite cool and it still got villas house on there adding to the hauler incorrectly fragility of the whole thing or the unbelievable nurse lady as benefits for all these weird things anyone has come into this room here well this is probably going to be a picture of the ship the slave was on joined in flames roaring I'm fair I so an eel economies are if the collector it'll come let's meet the same universe so he's calling yourself the collector skull beneath the skin he knows about skulls doesn't he I will go on around I mean you've got bullying these often you're doing things for the poor it has a picture of the ship how it would have been stacked or all these objects it's quite a cool actually this is how I would have been stacking these fateful James doing these things as you mean them around I love that bigger snake dead in the center there leaning down to attack it roaring that's really cool here we go here's like a I'm living together genuine Museum where you can then press on the objects in the boat actually really beautifully made you can press on the objects in the boat and it'll tell you about an obelisk a failure here or I'm gone show me some more on the bike all this want the fate of banished a man standing so it takes you through all the fake things from the boat the skull beneath the skin the Gryphon it's just like a real genuine gallery computer fee very nice an Italian French English as well and walk if you want perfect high last one here called unknown Pharaoh which looks rather good is is white I gave India look at it Jason it's be free doesn't no wait I gave it says over here blue granite gold and white agate so does that mean that the what it looks like the seashells are actually white again it's not what they are made out of as opposed to since shells which they can't be that's extraordinary things act and Timmy knows is going on about objects and sort of how objects can come to only so I must be thinking about light as well a little teeny tiny gold figure on the table it's quite cool a little teeny tiny gold figure nice difficult to see how its balancing one thing that's been stuck there quite carefully don't down here we've got a young and believe man covered in things what's this one made out of see what they're made out of the lapis lucky like that interesting like a [ __ ] lime white algae and how expensive that is to make out of lapis lazuli it's got extremely blue color that you hear about once again the white agate must be the young the fake white ocean barnacles and this is a two hands holding together I wonder what they're made out well they are made out of malachite purchasing more different materials have been used to do this obsession kind of things you never really think about it normally but here we are back at the top of this giant creature trying to look down lad the mental breakdown oh man it's really far down down there I'm a bit of a moment of freaking out I forget to close the edge but I'm pretty cool little look at the edge fire the fire that I find very nice and back it's on the way out now it's quite nice and you've got the like photos of the things we've potentially found on the ocean and then above you've got the actual well let's see yeah what's everybody see sort of wall paintings which add to the hold on in reality of the whole thing but it's really really clever it's very clever placed here in Venice as you count down these ornate stairs back to the ground okay so we finished going around it was absolutely stunning exhibition actually really really interesting not always necessarily a fan of Damien Hirst but this was really really clever really or inspiring was being clever amount of money to pull this thing off but basically what seems to be bits and bobs from a fete exhibition or a fake yoc bizarrely enough did actually go to the ocean to pull the things out of the ground but um maybe placed his things in the ground before he pulled the mound well maybe there were some real things to pull that for whatever there's absolutely stunning idea and really clever about authenticity what you see in museums when you believe had all fall together and just really good fun and my son actually really enjoyed it because he normally can't bear these things so on and we really really did absolutely worth going to if you're invest anyway it was really really good and here's one other massive sculpture outside that you'd see is he going past on the boats this giant sort of old sea monster attacking somebody and a horse that really cool ocean is that uh is that monumental sculpture again that you can only really see once you're out here outside and you see a perfectly from a boat but hey it's really cool though this cloth find a horse and man and giant sea monster fighting each other for more yarn apparently found under the ocean within the Palazzo Grassi and them Italy people are swarming in that thing eighteen years of time check it out no there you go you

Channel: ArtTop10.com

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Keywords: Contemporary Art, Fine art, Venice Biennale, Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Art Review, Video Art Review, ArtTop10, ArtTop10.com, Art, Sculpture, Damien Hirst, art, modern art, art history, hirst, damien, damien hirst, palazzo grassi, venice, tourism, travel, italy, venice biennale, art exhibition, biennale, review, art review, art scams, art galleries, art gallery, fine art, business, money money, art market, robert dunt, arttop10, arttop10.com

Id: wO9RSXDSRVs

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2017