The Tables have Turned, shadowplay installation (detail), 2008 The impulse to revolt. Revolving, rotating, mirroring, repeating, reversing, turning upside down or inside out, changing perspectives. I imagine the 16th Biennale of Sydney as a constellation of historical and contemporary works of art that celebrate and explore these dynamics, both in art and life. The ‘space’ explored by this exhibition is the gap between the first part of the title – revolutions – which suggests a directly political and content-first part of the title – revolutions – which suggests a directly political and content-based exhibition,and the subsequent phrase – forms that turn – which alternatively suggests the autonomy and isolation of the art object, spinning on its own and detached from daily life, or the energy and the potential of latent in forms themselves (turns that form). The first term collapses (is over-turned) into the second and within that gap perspective suddenly shifts, as when a joke is understood – causing unexpected laughter, a release of tension and a collapse into the comic dimension of radical and absolute presence. It is a space of rotation, confusion, revolt, insubordination, anarchy and disruption of order, a space of ‘revolution’. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev