Bodyscape: Patricia Piccinini

Bodyscape focuses on an imaginary landscape composed of unique and mythicised ‘bodies’. This isn’t a typical landscape of natural scenes, but rather it is a fantasised landscape created by Patricia Piccinini, featuring hybridised creatures and quasi-real narratives. This exhibition presents a very specific selection of artworks in various media, which have been created by Piccinini during the past fifteen years, including three series of photographs, Nature’s Little Helpers (2005), The Fitzroy Series (2011), Science Story (2001-2002), nine pieces of sculpture, one video work Tender (2014), and several sketches which are being displayed in public for the first time.

While Piccinini’s work is magical in nature, it utilizes everyday-life objects and scenarios as its background and motifs, through which she deliberately creates a surreal world, or ‘another world’, populated with hybridised and imaginary creatures. Piccinini has created these fantasised beings which, with their recognizably human perspectives, seem so real that viewers are able to establish emotional relationships with them in their daily routines. The exhibited works explore the discourse of contemporary bio-technology, as well as raising awareness for animals which are increasingly at risk of extinction. Ultimately, Piccinini’s art questions human desire, alongside the issues of bio-technology, and how this affects people’s lives.