SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.- The Biennale of Sydney is still on. Here, work from 56 artists or groups from 21 countries stretches across eight venues on developments in contemporary art. Richard Grayson’s verdict on how things are going is: "So far, so very good". Grayson is the first practicing artist to run the 29-year-old show. He claims the event is heading towards being the most popular yet, which would mean an attendance of more than 200,000, despite the absence of any drawcard as big as one of the past participants, Yoko Ono. Grayson’s spin: the crowds are an unexpected bonus. He says putting the show together was like making a tape for a party. He just chose what he liked and hoped other people would like it as well. Calling the show (The World May Be) Fantastic, Grayson describes the focus as "artists who use fictions, fakes, invented methodologies, hypotheses, subjective belief systems, modelings, and experiments as a basis for their work". In a written introduction, he says the construction of alternative worlds or alternative readings of this world "suggests that our everyday belief systems may also be changeable, constructed, hallucinatory, slippery and various".

The countries most represented are Australia, Britain and the United States, while some parts of the globe - such as Africa, South America and the Middle East - seem entirely absent. Critics have given the biennale a thumbs-up as refreshing and endearing - "jaunty", "a palpable hit" - but have damned some works. Cang Xin is the Chinese artist who licks famous places and miscellaneous objects. Photographs of some of his licks - like the Colosseum in Rome - are part of the biennale. Xin is a natural for media coverage - "a good ’wacky art’ story" as Richard Grayson puts it - and one Australian critic, Benjamin Genocchio, described the inclusion of his work as little more than a publicity stunt. The Biennale of Sydney is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Opera House, Artspace and 24 Orwell St, Kings Cross, until July 14, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Object Galleries, City Exhibition Space and the Customs House until July 28.