The artist as actor, stripped bare John Kaldor in Sydney. Picture: James Croucher Source: The Australian DRESSED in a high-vis vest and orange hard hat, John Kaldor could be mistaken for any other of the 50-odd workers renovating the historic Pier 2/3 wharf at Sydney's Walsh Bay. It's the dress shirt, jeans and smart shoes that give the millionaire philanthropist and arts patron away. "I'm just helping out where I can," he says above the din of nail guns and pneumatic drills as builders construct the eponymous 13 rooms of the Kaldor Project's latest temporary exhibition. We've been working on the details for almost a year, and we only last week got access to the site. Now it's coming together. I'm very excited. Kaldor has reason to be excited. 13 Rooms, Kaldor Public Art Projects' 27th free exhibition, features performance art from some of the world's most famous artists: Damien Hirst, Marina Abramovic, Santiago Sierra, Xu Zhen, Allora & Calzadilla, Simon Fujiwara, Joan Jonas, Xavier Le Roy, Laura Lima, Roman Ondak, Tino Sehgal, Xu Chen as well as young Australian duo Clark Beaumont. More than 140 performers will feature in the 10-day exhibition of "living sculpture" at the historic Walsh Bay wharves, in the shadow of Sydney's Harbour Bridge. "You couldn't have a more important line-up of artists," says Kaldor, the textile merchant who famously commissioned 1969's Wrapped Coast in which the headlands of Sydney's Little Bay were covered in white fabric. Yet while Kaldor is staying mum on the cost of 13 Rooms ("it is well over a million dollars," he says with a wink), he says the international project is the biggest in the 44-year history of the philanthropic arts body he founded. "This has been a big undertaking," he says, ducking as workmen trundle past with ladders. And we had those conversations initially: 'shall we do it, could we do it, can we afford it, how will we do it?' And we decided we had to do it. The project is "our most ambitious project since (Wrapped Coast) in 1969," when Christo and Jeanne-Claude covered 2.5km of coastline in almost 100,000sq m of white fabric. It also has the shortest run. Usually our projects run for four weeks. This only runs for 10 days. So we really want people to come and see it," he says. The project is the third in the Rooms series that began as 11 Rooms in Manchester in 2011, then became 12 Rooms in Essen, Germany. The exhibition, curated by Hans Ulrich Orbist and Klaus Biesenbach, gives over a purpose-built room, each painted white, in which each artist exhibits their work. Hirst's famous 1992 piece, Marian, Julian, will be re-performed by a cast of identical twins from Sydney. Twins, including Sydney's Paris and Georgia Taia, will stand in front one of Hirst's spot paintings and imitate each other's movements as dictated by a document provided by the artist. Abramovic's Luminosity, which premiered in 1997 at New York's Museum of Modern Art, will be held at the opposite end of the wharf. The Belgrade-born New York-based artist, best known for The Artist is Present, her 736-hour sit-in at MoMA in 2010, has granted Kaldor Public Art Projects permission to re-perform the famous static performance piece. Luminosity involves an artist sitting - naked and bathed in light - on a bicycle seat attached to a wall 3m above the ground. Abramovic, her arms outstretched, spent almost nine hours on the contraption in 1997. The re-performers, of whom there are nine, will take 30-minute rotations. One of them, Kathryn Puie, a freelance dancer from Sydney, says it is an honour to perform the work. It's a very difficult work. I'm just trying to just be present and open when I'm up there," she says after her first trial run on the contraption last week. It's really all about surrender and allowing the audience to come and confront their own issues. Being in Australia, the idea of the naked body is quite taboo in public spaces, so this is quite exciting. Jonas's work Mirror Check (1970) also involves nudity: a female artist will slowly observe her naked form with a small handheld mirror while Future/Perfect, Fujiwara's work, will, conversely, explore the male form: a muscular man lying on a sunbed, listening to language recordings. One of the rooms will be occupied by the work of artist Spanish artist Sierra, a confessed anarchist, who has commissioned soldiers to perform in Veterans of the War of Afghanistan, Timor-Leste, Iraq and Vietnam while dance works will also feature: France's Le Roy has choreographed a dance work for a duo in darkness while Allora & Calzadilla's work features a group of dancers in a circular room. Disabled performers will feature in Lima's Man=Flesh/Woman=Flesh - Flat; they will lie beneath a 45cm ceiling, while young Brisbane artists Nicole Beaumont and Sarah Clark will stand for eight hours a day on a small plinth for the exhibition's duration. Theirs will be the longest test of endurance in all the 13 performance spaces, says 13 Rooms producer Pollyanna Clayton-Stamm, who worked on the Manchester exhibition. "It's serious, serious endurance," she says. They will be here, all day every day. Kaldor says while the project is a coup, so too is staging it at the wharf: the historic pier warehouses, adjacent to the headquarters of Sydney Theatre Company and Bangarra, are in the centre of Sydney City's so-called cultural ribbon, which wraps around Walsh Bay to the harbour-front Museum of Contemporary Art and around to the Sydney Opera House. "It's a beautiful spot," Kaldor says, gazing up to the Harbour Bridge above. And it's a very different space for such art. The previous Rooms projects were shown in gallery and museum spaces. This is in a heritage space. And this is a very contemporary (show) in a heritage site and a totally different atmosphere. Kaldor loves the idea of a temporary exhibition of performance art. Pioneering performance artists Gilbert and George were brought out to Australia for the third Kaldor Project in 1973. "It's nostalgic for me for that reason," he says. When I heard about this I thought we really must do it. It's the coming together of the visual and performing and it's a completely new way of looking at contemporary art. The exhibition, which will be open between 11am and 7pm each day, is - as with all the Kaldor projects - free to the public. "I believe in free art," Kaldor says. Always have. Since the very beginning our vision (is to) bring the latest of contemporary art to Australia. And so here we have it: a sculpture exhibition where the sculptures go home at night. 13 Rooms opens on April 11 at Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay, Sydney.