Venice Biennale 2016

In 2016 Little Architecture produced a scale model of the Palazzo Mora, a 15th century Venetian palace. The model was created for Melbourne based artist Tanja Milbourne. This model was then artificially aged, and photographed at various stages of decay. The photographs were exhibited in the 2016 Venice Biennale.

The following extract is taken from                 Tanja Milbourne explaining the project:

"Science predicts a future of global warming, rising sea levels and likely conflicts over resources. There may come a time when many parts of the world will become unliveable, flooded and abandoned. 'The Flooding of Venice' represents this future as a series of photographs.

"Working with a scale-model replica of the room at the Palazzo Mora, in Venice, where the work is exhibited, the artist created photographs that depict sequentially – and in great detail – the palazzo becoming flooded and then increasingly derelict: the wallpaper starting to peel off; the marble cracking; plants starting to grow; debris collecting in the space; the roof deteriorating and its structure crumble. 

"The work functions on multiple levels; the viewer may recognise the space depicted by the photographs as the Palazzo Mora, allowing to identify the predictions being made as likely possibilities of what the future may hold for the space they are standing in. 

"On another level, the viewer may also be able to discover the 'lie' of the photographs. By presenting the photographs of the modelled space within the real space they challenge the accepted ‘reality’ of the photograph and in particular the architectural photograph.