Curated by David Elliott

Veteran curator David Elliott disperses the Biennale of Sydney across several harbor-area locations, including the Sydney Opera House, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the glorious Cockatoo Island, where disused industrial buildings and a former prison play host to a massive light-box installation by Hiroshi Sugimoto and the Tiger Lillies’ new “post-punk neo-Brechtian” opera, among other contributions by some fifty international artists. Ransacking both the recent past and the haunted present, Elliott has selected works with maximum iconic presence and acute historical resonance: Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportune: Stage One, 2004, involves a sequence of exploding cars in the island’s old Turbine Hall; Aussie-born Brook Andrew’s Jumping Castle War Memorial, 2010, recasts the inflatable carnival staple as Aboriginal redoubt, requiring all who request access to mentally register the significance of entering before doing so.

— Charles Green