Patricia Piccinini: Curious affection

Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / The Bond 2016 / Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing / Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / The Bond 2016 / Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing / 162 x 56 x 50cm / Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco / Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco

Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / The Bond 2016 / Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing / Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / The Bond 2016 / Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing / 162 x 56 x 50cm / Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco / Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco / View full image

The most ambitious exhibition of work by Patricia Piccinini exclusively at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in March 2018, became GOMA’s largest ever solo exhibition by an Australian artist.

Featuring more than 50 new and recent works by the globally renowned artist, ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ included sculpture, photography, video, drawing and installation, as well as never-before-seen commissions including entirely immersive environments. The exhibition also considered the challenging world of science and genetic engineering developments and nature, and how humanity will face its future.

Piccinini is one of the most interesting Australian artists working today, exploring the interrelationship of humanity and the natural world, and the social and moral impact of scientific research, genetics and biotechnology on people, animals and our planet.

Working with a skilled team of collaborators and computer technology, her art collapses the boundaries between reality and artifice to create captivating environments populated by strangely compelling, often hybridised, startlingly realistic sculptures, that are foreign and strange looking, yet seemingly familiar. The artworks deliberately challenged conceptions about what it means to be human and the power of empathy.

Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco.

Courtesy the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco. / View full image

‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Saturday 24 March until Sunday 5 August 2018. The exhibition featured some of Piccinini’s most recognisable life-like sculptures, among them The Bond 2016, a woman lovingly cradling an ambiguous creature, a large-scale, newly commissioned inflatable sculpture suspended in GOMA’s atrium – a continuation of ideas the artist explored in the controversial hot air balloon work titled The Skywhale, a commission that marked the Centenary of Canberra in 2013. The exhibition also featured a major new installation The Field, a landscape of some 3000 genetically modified flower sculptures that draws visitors into a vast, multisensory environment.

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