Venice on my mind

This skinny writer has been flitting around. Not internationally. On trains, in cars, in boats, on heels. I was invited to the Australian Pavillion at the Venice Biennale, and rocked up with my accent and previously mentioned handbag. I felt a little silly and couldn't find my friend (hello, telephone?). But it was so lovely to be swept up by art works and gorgeous lighting and swanky people and that bubbly didn't hurt either...

The Venice Biennale is like the Oscars of art ceremonies, with most of the countries you can think of represented in national pavillions in the Giardini at the the north of the island, or in the vast halls of the ancient Arsenale nearby. If you pay the entry fee of 25e you can see either one, then come back another day and see the other. There are also free exhibits are scattered across the city in curious rooms lapped by canal water, or elegantly decaying palazzi overlooking boats swishing past. Grab a map in a bar or at the station, and start hiking (sometimes you have to catch a vaporetto and it's a good idea to buy an all-day travel card). Do wear a hat.

Ai Weiwei watched by prison guards

It's tremendously exciting, even if you don't quite understand what you find before you. And such a thrill to see the machinations of art at work. I saw Tibetan monks preparing coloured sand mandalas and a friend's fabulous design on show. I hiked up to the church of Sant'Antonin to see SACRED, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's six massive steel boxes placed incongruously on the dazzling marble floor. Through tiny window holes you can see the 81-day prison experience of Weiwei in a series of dioramas depicting the lack of privacy and the sense of menace inside the cell, complete with the artist sitting on the toilet watched by guards.

Congolese soldiers in a hot pink war - can beauty convey suffering?

Though I spent three days walking about I still feel I haven't seen enough. And some works were so compelling you want to see them again. Like the Irish Pavillion, which showed the film documentary of artist Richard Mosse, the culmination of three years of exploration of war-torn Congo. Shown on multiple screens in a darkened room (you sit on the floor with boats gurgling past), you are surrounded by gun skirmishes, a discarded body on the road, an endless refugee camp - all shot on discontinued military film intended for camouflage detection. The result is a viciously beautiful voyage in jarring colour through a country frayed by war. Local sounds, songs and metallic music accompany the series of scenes which offers no narrative, no exit. I found it compelling.

On my last day I wandered into a palazzo called the Future Generation Art Prize, and I joined a small group of people in a lavishly furnished Venetian room. They were watching a young man dry-humping the white sheets of a four-poster bed. I watched for a few minutes, thinking how lusty and naughty in the afternoon, feeling like a total voyeuse. What cheek(s)!

No photographs of that, sorry ladies, but here are some other arty glimpses.

Jeremy Deller's English Magic - hawk clutches Range Rover in his critique of wealth

David Bowie steps out on hIs 1972 tour, a year Deller examines through image

Chinese sweetness and kitsch

This man is an island - from the Finnish Pavillion

The marvellous and manic work of Sarah Sze from the USA

Body talk on the lagoon

Sumptuous palazzo detail - sigh !