SYDNEY (The Guardian / Herald Sun): The Sydney Biennale board has terminated all ties with with the biennale's major sponsor Transfield Services, which runs the controversial Manus Island asylum seeker deportation centre.
This follows high profile protests by a number of artists who last week withdrew their work from the biennale over the board's refusal to axe Transfield Services as the biennale's major sponsor. A total of nine artists and a technician had joined the boycott by the end of last week.
“We have listened to the artists who are the heart of the Biennale and have decided to end our partnership with Transfield effective immediately,” the biennale board said in a statement.
The biennale chairman, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, who is also CEO of Transfield Services, also resigned his position on the biennale board.
The Guardian reported Belgiorno-Nettis as saying the artists’ boycott had an impact on his decision to resign. “With many of the participating artists now torn between loyalty to our creative director and wanting to make a stand against this government policy, the core spirit of the festival is under a dark cloud,” he said.
Although Belgiorno-Nettis was against the artists' boycott, he unwittingly indicated that it had received growing support, saying that even "some international government agencies are beginning to question the decision of the Biennale’s board to stand by Transfield".
Artists said earlier that they found the detention of asylum seekers in the Papua New Guinea deportation centre "ethically indefensible and in breach of human rights". The board's decision to axe Transfield Services as a sponsor is being seen as a victory for asylum seekers' rights.
The biennale is set to open on March 21. Transfield Services is an Australian asset management corporation which last month won a AU$1.2bn contract to run Australia's deportation centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
Artists boycott Sydney Biennale
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