The 18th Biennale of Sydney, all our relations, was the first to be developed by a curatorial duo, Artistic Directors Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster. De Zegher and McMaster proposed an exhibition that functioned as a collaboration between curators, artists, and audience—a ‘collective composition’ that championed values of connectivity, conversation, and compassion as models for being in the world. To this end, one of the criteria for participation was an interest in conversation and collaboration. Artists were also invited to consider the audience’s experience over time. Art became a way of activating a ‘relational field’ in which things and people interacted and created meaning together.

On Cockatoo Island, under the evocative subtitle ‘Stories, Senses and Spheres’, large-scale sculptures, immersive installations, and sound works were presented especially for the site including Cvijanovic’s The River, a massive sculptural painting that twists into a cornucopia-like form. Depicting multiple rivers from around the world this work is consistent with Cvijavovic’s sampling of imagery joined into a single painting. The twisted form is meant to evoke atmosphere, the idea that they sky is reflected in the waters of the river and that areas that were once river are now land and vice versa.