Podcast interview by Tiarney Miekus. You can also listen on iTunes here.
The lead image on QAGOMA’s website for Curious Affection is a portrait of the artist, Patricia Piccinini, next to one of her sculptures. The sculpted faces of a woman and the fleshy, ridge-backed child-creature she cradles could almost be real. When contrasted with the artist’s body, though, the blankness of the child’s eyes and a slight waxiness of flesh gives it away.
This uncanniness plays out in a much more visceral sense when faced with Piccinini’s works in – so to say – the flesh. They share the pinkish pallor and hairy follicles of Caucasian humans, but here they diverge. Exaggerated folds and orifices form creatures that are part animal, part human and all mutant. It is the familiarity of flesh-like silicon, moulded into unfamiliar configurations, that makes Piccinini’s works at once attractive and repulsive.
Curious Affection – QAGOMA’s largest ever solo presentation by an Australian artist – will feature these sculptures alongside photographs, drawings and new work, including a commissioned inflatable that will fill a multi-storey atrium.
Rather than presenting genetic mutation and alteration as monstrous or fear inducing, Piccinini approaches technology with openness and curiosity.
Arguably Piccinini’s particularly grotesque creatures, like Bottom Feeder (2009) and The Pollinator (2017), are designed to push the limits of empathy and bring us face to face with our own body horror. But according to exhibition curator Peter McKay, Piccinini’s visual fables suggest that our “engagement with nature, [our] reverence and sense of wonder, can be rekindled through our use of technology.” By expanding – or completely redefining – our conception of what is natural and good, we can move towards equity and equality in a rapidly changing world. – Rebecca Gallo
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Until 2026, Wanneroo Regional Art Gallery will be showing 53 original artworks by one of the most famous artists of the 20th century: Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol ICONS includes famous works such as Elvis (1963), Campbell’s Soup Cans (1968) and Marilyn (1967).
For the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Paris-based Fondation Cartier has commissioned 14 new works by Indigenous artists across the globe, curated by renowned Kuku Yalanji artist, Tony Albert.
From revamped industrial sites to brand new spaces in Sydney, to openings in Adelaide, Melbourne, Cottesloe and Darwin—across Australia there’s a flurry of new and reopening gallery activity.
Ceremony and radical activism may seem like differing forces, but The 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial is showing us otherwise, centering itself on art, action and change. This touring exhibition is now on display at Western Plains Cultural Centre.
In 1841, the women aboard a British convict ship crafted a large-scale quilt known as ‘The Rajah quilt’. It’s one the most requested items from the National Gallery of Australia’s collection—and it’s now showing alongside a further 21 quilts, many crafted by women.
Yhonnie Scarce, a Kokatha and Nukunu artist, has emerged in recent years as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, curates a survey of significant works by Scarce from the last few years.
