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On Labour Day, 2025 I attended the Bonavista Biennale, a peninsula-wide festival of art installations that I’d inadvertently discovered in 2021 when I happened upon a life-sized animatronic tyrannosaurus Rex in an otherwise desolate Newfoundland harbour. It was dipping it’s giant nose into a barrel of faux oil over and over, mimicking those strange drinking bird things that seemed so popular back in the ’70’s and it was cool as hell, due in large part to its utterly unlikely and rather remarkable location. I didn’t know what the Biennale was then and I barely know what it is now, but I haven’t missed one of the biannual* artistic scavenger hunts since.
I suppose it’s less of a scavenger hunt than it is a treasure map, for the Bonavista Biennale supplies visitors with a passport/map that encourages one to track down art that has been scattered throughout a swath of Newfoundland’s amazing nooks and stunning crannies. Just as we’d done in 2023, m’lady and I made a multi-day affair out of it, and once again we used our campsite in Lockston Path Provincial Park as home base for the weekend. In this case we got our passport stamped at two sites on our arrival date – both in the pretty town of Trinity just a few kilometres from our campground – and one more site on our departure date, while we obtained the rest of our total count of sixteen stamps (out of a possible seventeen) on windy, drizzling, and downright miserable September 1st.
And oh the art we saw! There were wicker humans, glittering fishing nets, panoramas made of tiny stones, a swarm of little mosquitos made of tin, lots of photography, some nifty films and so much more. M’lady’s favourite was probably Larry the Lobster, a 7′ crustacean bedazzled in sequins, toys, and tiny dolls. I really liked the more permanent, outdoor installations so I was a big fan of Marianne Nicolson’s work embedding a small hillside with wooden dowels in the shape of a whale and other sea life, even moreso because finding her piece required hiking to Pat Murphy’s Meadow in Kings Cove, a beautiful chunk of the world if there ever was one.
And like I say, one of the biggest attractions to the Bonavista Biennale is the geography it thrusts upon the eager art lover. From the adorable puffins and impressive root cellars of Elliston and the mysterious devil’s footprints in Keels to the swinging-for-the-fences town of Bonavista itself, you see some great country in between the art. And that’s not even mentioning marvellous Maberly or the town that first convinced m’lady that we should move to Newfoundland in the first place: Port Rexton.
Unfortunately we were thwarted from our goal of completion when we found site #12 in lovely Port Union closed. We waited in vain until twenty minutes after their posted opening hour of 11am, when we were forced to satisfy ourselves with a mere peek through the window at the nifty Inuit clothing and beadwork being displayed inside. And while our spying probably afforded us most of what was on offer at site #12, our passport remained blatantly and conspicuously unstamped. We had experienced a similar folly the previous festival when site #8 had been unexpectedly closed for the day due to a family emergency.
For the record, the only stop we made on the following day was also one that we found closed. But this one was just six kilometres from our campsite and even more conveniently, just a five-minute walk from the only EV fast-charger in Port Rexton. So after a heck of a hike along the Fox Island Trail we sauntered through our favourite little village and self-served our sixteenth and final passport stamp while the car was conveniently powering itself up for an easy, efficient, and environmentally friendly drive home.
Thanks Biennale, see you next next year!
*Or if you prefer: biennial. Much like the term “biweekly”, “biannual” has two rather different meanings; it can refer to an event that happens every two years or one that occurs twice per year. The much less well-known “biennial” is much more specific as it specifically means “every second year”.
Now if you are thinking that “biennial” is the inspiration for the name of the Bonavista Biennale, well mio amico, you would be almost exactly right. In fact, “biennale” is Italian for “every second year”, and every second year art festivals have been a thing in Italy going all the way back to the 1895 Venice Biennale.
And they are popular too. There are currently around 250 biennale’s being held worldwide. By my math that’s an average of right around 125 biannual* art festivals per annum.
Todd Man Out 