Patricia Piccinini gives us an insight into studio life

In preparation for the exhibition ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘, it was necessary to make progress visits to Piccinini’s studio in Melbourne to keep pace with her immense creative output. With so much to say about her work, and so many interesting people responsible for a giddying array of techniques, it was important that we record these visits to share.

I made the pilgrimage with the Gallery cinematographer on three occasions to capture the work flow and listen to Piccinini’s ideas evolve, with so much activity to document, filming days stretched into the night. Back in Brisbane we sorted through days of footage to construct this immensely watchable introduction to the artist, her studio, and her new artworks.

Related: Patricia Picinini

‘Curious Affection’ is Piccinini’s most ambitious exhibition to date, it includes a suite of immersive multisensory installations – including a large-scale inflatable sculpture – especially conceived for GOMA’s expansive spaces. Occupying the entire ground floor, the exhibition also includes a retrospective of her most recognisable works from the past 20 years.

Piccinini is unquestionably one of Australia’s most imaginative, thoughtful, and exacting artists. This-behind-the-scenes look into the ideation, creation, and fabrication process that inform studio life provides a rare insight into the workings of her formidable team. At the same time it also introduces many of the artists key themes and inspirations in her own words. This documentary has been paired with her exhibition walk-through highlighting four of her most recent works.

These videos goes a long way to introducing Piccinini’s enchanting and heartfelt vision. Enjoy.

Peter McKay is Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA

Behind-the-scenes with Patricia Piccinini

Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube to be the first to go behind-the-scenes / Behind-the-scenes documentary created by Peter McKay, Exhibition Curator and Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA; Jeremy Virag, QAGOMA cinematographer and film grading; Shih-Yin Judy Yeh, QAGOMA Cinema Technical, editing.

Walk through the exhibition with Patricia Piccinini

Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube to be the first to go behind-the-scenes / Exhibition walk-through created by Peter McKay, Exhibition Curator and Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA; Jeremy Virag, QAGOMA cinematographer and film grading; and Denny Ryan, QAGOMA Cinema Technican, editing.

Subscribe to YouTube to go behind-the-scenes / Read more about your Australian Collection

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‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ / Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / 24 March – 5 August 2018.

Feature image: Peter McKay (right) with Patricia Piccinini in her Melbourne studio

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    Looking at Patricia Piccinini’s monsters looking at us

    Our culture — its art, music, theology and techno-science — is filled with the promises of monsters, that is to say, the irreverent energy of those who deviate from prescriptive normality. Known for her imaginative lifelike creatures, visit ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ at GOMA until 5 August 2018, and ponder our place in a world where advances in technology are challenging the boundaries between human and monstrous hybrid creatures. The connotations of that very term — monsters — however, tell a significant tale about our collective relationship to those who are otherwise embodied, both anthropomorphic — having human characteristics, and animal. Considered ‘other’, it is as if monstrous, non-human, animal and hybrid others inhabit a specific dimension that endows them with exceptional imaginary and metamorphic powers. They are both less-and-more than human, and other-than human at the same time. Connection and empathy are at the heart of my practice. My creatures are imaginary beings that are almost possible. They are not always traditionally beautiful, but they have a beauty and an honesty within them. They are more vulnerable than threatening. Patricia Piccinini Piccinini’s monstrous bodies blur the distinction between normal and pathological, self and other, human and non-human, and, in this capacity, they are a privileged site of phantasmic projection. Their influence on the cultural imagination is far-reaching: hybrid, monstrous bodies are cast in the mode of a familiar, yet threatening, otherness — a quasi-kin. They embody ontological impropriety. As objects of simultaneous wonder and fear, admiration and disgust, they cause a disturbance in the status quo, evoking a mixture of fascination and loathing. Whatever the response, they are culturally produced as sensational objects of visual display. There is also a paradoxically reassuring quality about them: their hybrid, monstrous bodies have already undergone a catastrophic mutation and have survived. Most people go through life dreading that they will have to confront a traumatic experience, but monsters already have. They embody both the trauma and the act of overcoming; having passed their test in life, they count as existential aristocrats. Their resilience grants them a cathartic function in relation to those — especially humans — who are still fearfully anticipating a blow. Patricia Piccinini highlights her favourite works The artist challenges us to review our preconceived ideas and socially enforced relationships with the otherwise embodied. This critical process starts by questioning the very cultural repertoire and mental habits that have structured our visual, cognitive and affective relationships with these others. Piccinini’s hybrid, monstrous creatures return our gaze, they look back at us and thus undo the consumeristic objectification of their otherness. They also look into us, with eyes full of compassion and understanding. Their intensity explodes the boundaries between human normality and its others. They stand in their plenitude, looking at our lack. Although it is tempting to take this remark as a humanisation of their gaze and their moral fibre, it would also be condescending to attribute human qualities, as if these traits were inherently superior. It is rather the case that Piccinini’s others transcend the binary divides altogether and come to exist in a continuum with a multitude of human and non-human others. In so doing, they challenge and shift boundaries. Their relational power induces a trans-species form of care, while their empathic force expresses a posthuman relational ethics. Read more on our blog / Subscribe to YouTube to watch behind-the-scenes footage and exclusive interviews / Buy the publication Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / Big Mother 2005 / Silicone, fibreglass, polyurethane, leather, human hair; ed. 2/3 + 1 AP / 175cm (high) / Gift of S Angelakis, John Ayers, Candy Bennett, Cherise Conrick, James Darling AM and Lesley Forwood, Rick Frolich, Frances Gerard, Patricia Grattan French, Stephanie Grose, Gryphon Partners Advisory, Janet Hayes, Klein Family Foundation, Edwina Lehmann, Ian Little, David and Pam McKee, Dr Peter McEvoy, Hugo and Brooke Michell, Jane Michell, Paul Taliangis, Michael and Tracey Whiting and anonymous donors through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2010 / Collection: Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide / © The artist ‘Curious Affection’ tests all our received wisdom about nature and nurture, the real and the unreal, and what it means to be human. It explores the myriad of interactions involving humanity and the natural world, collapsing and confusing conventional boundaries. This results in extraordinary environments populated by compelling and startlingly realistic creatures. Delve into the artist’s world where the natural world pushes against the artificial, and vice versa, where the social, ethical and moral implications of genetic research are explored, and where creatures — intricately and lovingly created — visit us from a conceivable future. Professor Rosi Braidotti was born in Italy and grew up in Australia, where she received a First-Class Honours degree from the Australian National University in Canberra in 1977. She went on to receive a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1981. She has taught at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands since 1988, when she was appointed as the founding professor in women’s studies. In 1995, she became the founding Director of the Netherlands research school of Women’s Studies, a position she held until 2005. She was also founding director of the Centre for the Humanities from 2007 until 2016. Braidotti is a pioneer in European women’s studies and her fields of interest include social and political theory, cultural politics, gender, feminist theory and ethnicity studies. Feature image detail: Patricia Piccinini’s Big Mother 2005 Edited extract from ‘Affirmation and a passion for difference: Looking at Piccinini looking at us’. Read the full essay in Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection. #PiccininiGOMA
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    Patricia Piccinini’s paradox: The Carrier

    Patricia Piccinini’s The Carrier 2012 is both provocative and thoughtful, the artwork hints at what is possible from the creatures we may want to create in the not-too-distant future, making us focus our attention on what may lay ahead for us — is this relationship between humanoid and human how we will care for our ageing population? The carrier himself is a muscular male, strong and powerful with bright eyes and bear traits in his nose, tail and claws, he is balding, with age spots, yet his bear-like physique is able to lift the frail woman behind him with ease. It seems the carrier and woman are connected in some way, physically but also emotionally, therein lies the conflict. Perched up high, she looks comfortable and content to rely on his assistance, yet what is their relationship, why is he carrying her, is it an equal partnership, or is he just performing a service? We can wonder if the carrier is the next step in post-human technology, his life seems perfectly engineered to the task he performs, and it is feasible that he is happily self-employed. Listen to Patricia Piccinini Know Brisbane through the QAGOMA Collection / Delve into our Queensland Stories / Read more about Australian Art / Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube to go behind-the-scenes Known for her imaginative, yet strangely familiar, lifelike hybrid creatures, Patricia Piccinini invites us to think about our place in a world where advances in biotechnology and digital technologies are challenging the boundaries of humanity. ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ / Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / 24 March – 5 August 2018