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On August of 2023 m’lady and I spent a couple of days exploring the Bonavista peninsula taking in the entirety of the Bonavista Biennale art festival. Okay, we missed one of the exhibits – not our own fault – but for all intensive porpoises* we took in the whole thing.
Well, wait a minute? [this is me talking as you now] What the heck is a “Biennale festival”, where is Bonavista, how do you even pronounce “Biennale”, and what’s with the dolphins?
[aaaannd…back to me:] Okay, okay…take it easy! All in good time Grasshopper, all in good time.
“Grasshopper?” [that’s you again]
[me: sighing] Kung Fu…it was a TV show…
Anyway, Bonavista is the name of the next peninsula over from the one on which I reside, here in eastern Newfoundland. It’s a pretty big peninsula, about 85kms x 20kms, with plenty of pretty towns and awesome scenery. Bonavista is also the name of Bonavista’s largest town, a rugged and picturesque community on the northern tip of the peninsula with a population of three thousand people. Bonavista has been around for a long time – it is where John Cabot first made ground in North America – but it took until the most recent (and still current) mayorship for the town to begin enjoying a very welcome and successful gentrification.
Like hosting the Biennale for example (which I think/hope is pronounced “bee-enn-ell”, both because it’s easy to say that way but especially because I hear it as “Be NL”, as in: exist as if you were as laid back as the province of Newfoundland & Labrador), which is a free biennial** art festival that features dozens of installations spread far and wide throughout the northern half of the peninsula. I had briefly brushed up against the previous Bonavista Biennale two years earlier (of course) when a quick overnight visit to Port Rexton saw me and a visiting friend stumble across a couple of very impressive middle-of-nowhere sculptures, and this time ‘round I was excited to find them all.
And so m’lady and I set out in our newish electric car nice and early in the day and by early afternoon we were visiting our first installation, which proved to be a cool Native photo/bone sculpture exhibit inside the former Lethbridge Cash Store, just a few dozen kilometres north of Clarenville. The store/exhibit was manned by a very friendly and informative lady who was happy to hand us a festival map and be the first to stamp our festival passport, which we found inside the brochure.
The other nineteen installations were aligned along a loop around the northern half of the peninsula. We veered right towards Port Rexton and pulled off at Trinity, where we found four more sites before pitching our tent for the night in the very nearby Lockston Path Provincial Park. Then on the morning of August 26th we woke up packed up and got right at ‘er, stopping in at several sites around Port Union and Catalina (I even bought a Biennale t-shirt in Port Union) before getting deep into things up around Maberly, Elliston, and of course Bonavista (the town). About half of the Biennale exhibits were packed into these three municipalities, including an amazing mural by Jordan Bennett (which was in fact left over from a past Biennale), a thought-provoking linked circle of Muskoka chairs called This land is my land, this land is your land by Don Kwan, a nifty installation hanging from the rafters inside the old Loyal Orange Lodge, and our one missed exhibit. Whatever it was, it was inside the Mockbeggar Plantation Store but the local who had been hired to open the door and watch the place wasn’t able to come in. Ah well.
Heading back along the peninsula loop m’lady and I caught a few more out-of-the-way installations before stopping for lunch at the much-lauded and perfectly named seasonal restaurant, the Bonavista Social Club. Lunch was good but man, it took a long time! But like I say: it was good, with lots of fresh vegetables (the Bonavista Social Club does its own micro-farming).
Back on the road we had just two remaining exhibits to visit – both by the same artist (Jessica Winters) – in order to complete our Biennale passport (minus stamp #8, which represented the Mockbeggar Plantation Store). And then it was off to Gander for a Newfoundland production of the hit Broadway musical (which is set in Gander), Come From Away.
But that’s another story.
And to cap this story: I can’t wait until the next Biennale festival. I just can’t see myself missing it. Especially since it only comes biennially.
*Yeah, I know. It’s a joke.
**Biannual means “occurring twice every year”, whereas biennial means “occurring once every two years”***. Biweekly should be so lucky.
***I’d say “you’re welcome”, but discerning between biannual and biennial really doesn’t come up very often. You’ll see it quadriennially, maybe triennially at the most.
Todd Man Out 