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.

Outside there are huge, vaguely spherical objects on sticks, spattered with red, looking like balloons fashioned from heavily preused Play-Doh. Inside, the roof seems to be supported by mighty pillars made from cement and sacking. All around are big ungainly objects: an enormous cone of untidy red wire, a pair of rough-hewn wheels on an axle, a megaphone.

Altogether it has a ramshackle charm, especially in comparison with the German contribution next door, which is downright fearsome. The artist, Anne Imhof, has placed wire cages in front of the building, patrolled by Doberman pinschers and a squad of soberly-clad attendants. Within, you encounter more performers writhing under a transparent floor and trapped in sealed compartments.