Aussie Artist Patricia Piccinini Opens A Massive Show In Brissie This Month

Contributor: PEDESTRIAN.TV

If you haven’t already heard of major contemporary Australian artist Patricia Piccinini, can we politely ask where the bloody hell have you been? Prepare yourself for a quick cheat sheet in modern art ‘n making waves internationally.

Piccinini was born in Sierra Leone, raised in Canberra, and now lives and works in Melbourne. In 2003, she repped Oz at the super prestigious Venice Biennale, and recently toured her free exhibition of beguiling hyperreal yet lifelike human/animal/fantastical creatures, Consciousness to Brazil between 2015 and 2017.

For Consciousness, she was named by The Art Newspaper as the top contemporary artist in the world in 2016 based on visitor figures. It was the second most popular art exhibition in the WORLD that year, beating out major retrospectives of, for example, Frida Kahlo in São Paulo, and Georgia O’Keeffe in London. Wowzers.

Well the opportunity to meet some of the works displayed at the above exhibitions face to face – plus a number of brand new sculptures – is now: Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection, a y’huge exhibition of her work opened at Brisbane‘s Gallery of Modern Art on March 24.

Piccinini is known for creating entire environments built from fascinating hyperreal creatures, blurring the distinction between reality and artifice – they’re sculptures of hybridised people-animals-something-elses which while startlingly realistic and familiar reach into the realm of the imagination.

It’s their ability to bridge the gap between the real and pointedly unreal which both enthrals viewers and brings up questions of our empathy, estrangement from and continually shifting relationship to the natural world.

Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / Kindred 2018 / Silicone, fibreglass, hair / 103 x 95 x 128cm / Courtesy: The artist; Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco / © The artist

The works are in a word totally captivating, like looking dead-on into the eyes of something/someone that is both you and an extension of you, an evolution that seems almost within reach thanks to ongoing developments in biotechnology and genetic research. As Patricia says, “I’m interested in a journey from the separation of strangeness to a feeling of closeness.”

Find out more or nab yo’self a ticket to Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection at Brissie’s GOMA, from now to 5 August, HERE.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV