Patricia Piccinini, The Bond, 2016, silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, 162 x 56 x 50 cm. Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco.
Patricia Piccinini, Doubting Thomas, 2008, Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, chair, 100 × 53 × 90cm. Edition of 3 + 1 A/P. McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery Collection, Langwarrin. Purchased in 2010, The Elisabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation. Courtesy the artist.
Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2002, Silicone, polyurethane, leather, plywood, human hair 80 x 150 x 110cm. Bendigo Art Gallery Collection, Bendigo. RHS Abbott Bequest Fund 2003. Courtesy the artist.
Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2002, Silicone, polyurethane, leather, plywood, human hair 80 x 150 x 110cm. Bendigo Art Gallery Collection, Bendigo. RHS Abbott Bequest Fund 2003. Courtesy the artist.
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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In an Australian first, the Art Gallery of Western Australia presents Moving Landscape—an exhibition by internationally acclaimed US artist Sam Contis, curated alongside Dr Anna Arabindan-Kesson.
Hobart-based Max Mueller’s In the Sticks exhibition at Handmark Gallery features oil-on-linen works that show tranquil scenes of Tasmania, musing on how nature is managed and maintained in a context of civilisation and curation.
Inspired by the ways in which nature informs creativity, the exhibition Material Nature, now showing at Drill Hall Gallery, aims to encourage viewers to think deeply about the human connection to the natural world.
Revealed: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists is an annual celebratory exhibition of Aboriginal artists from across Western Australia. Now showing at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, the event has a community spirit and passion that grows each year.
Curated by artistic director Hoor Al Qasimi, the program is centred by the theme of Rememory. Originating from author Toni Morrison, the ideas seek to explore the intersection of memory and history—revisiting, reconstructing and reclaiming histories that have been erased or repressed.
Wendy Sharpe’s expressive paintings incorporate social criticism and otherworldly dreamscapes, blending the real and imagined. With a current exhibition at Philip Bacon Galleries, she reflects on her three-decade practice and that iconic painting of Magda Szubanski.
