NGV Triennial Catalogue

Big. Bigger. Biggest. I remember learning by rote these comparative adjectives back in primary school in Glasgow in the 1960s. Everything about the NGV Triennial fits into the third category, not least the five kilogram catalogue that arrives in a box and unfolds into five volumes. Try putting that on a library shelf without it constantly falling onto the floor. I try to remember bigger catalogues. But even casting a distant eye over all the past documentas, Skulptur Projekte Munsters, and Venice Biennales, I still draw a series of blanks. Does it need to be this big? Having just recovered from a hernia operation, I looked on the box before me with the horror of a vegan contemplating a cheeseburger.

There are many questions that could be 2020, was a fabulous threnody on perception and spatial relations, but it felt cramped within the space it was allotted. It underscored how the NGV lacks a monumental space like the Hamburger Banhof in Kwade’s adopted city of Berlin, or Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Did the NGV underestimate how popular it would be, and for what reasons? I visited four times and it was always packed. More than one insider told me it was a very popular and apparently safe venue for Tinder and Grindr hook-ups – but aren’t all art galleries these days? And does an art gallery need to be so noisy? Some galleries sounded like an unamusing amusement arcade.