Australia – Patricia Piccinini
Patricia Piccinini is
probably one of the best examples of how a visual artist responds to rapid
technological developments. She explores
the aspects of modern science and technology through her sculptures,
photographs and video installations. Reactionary
artists’ inspirations often come from the events that change the world around
them be it war, genetic engineering research, the urbanization of spaces,
psychological disorders due to a faster speed of life…
Patricia Piccinini has
gained most recognition for her work that relates to medical technology
development - topics like genetic engineering and mutations. The artist’s work examines human
responsibility in altering natural and artificial universe but it doesn’t judge
this responsibility, it only shows the infinity of outcomes; perversion of good intentions of the aspect
of Improving. As Peter Hennessey
referred to Piccinini’s Biosphere work:
”[these are] snapshots of a world that might exist”, a world that is
quite disturbing, a Sci-fi lab experiment that has (perhaps) gone askew.
In order to understand where
Patricia Piccinini’s work comes from, it is important to examine where she
started and how she became an artist that now draws thousands of people to current
exhibitions. Patricia Piccinini earlier
work has been divided the body of her work into two categories: Atmosphere
and Autosphere.
In most of the Atmosphere
work Piccinini dealt with technological invasion / development into the natural
such as a natural plane – a body of water of a synthetic sea or plastic plants --
or a microsystem, such as the inside of animal lungs. In Atmosphere you could see work such as a series of video
stills depicting an ocean horizon presented on a number of TV screens – similar
image, synthetic and surreal in its colours and the mode it was presented -- or a series video stills showing the process
of breathing (Breathing Room) that meant to examine panic attacks that often
happen to modern city-dweller because of the expectancies of the modern world
and its speed.
The second category of the
series of work was Autoshpere where Piccinini mostly examined the
influence of technology on the developing world and its strange trends such as
in the work called Car Nuggets which the artist calls ”lumps of
carness”. They are the ”essence of car”
and are 3-D digital art images of delicately technological yet very organic in
their actual form, chicken nuggets-like shapes. Another example
of Autosphere work was Sex Dog, a digitally manipulated image of
a dog that has grown two, pornographic, silicone human breasts.
Finally, there’s Biosphere. This is the most challenging body of
Piccinini’s art. A number of
exhibitions shows bizarre, often humanoid creatures, rodents with human ears
growing out of their backs, naked models sitting on the floor and surrounded by
a sea of these ear-ridden rodents, Stepford wives holding bizarre little dolls,
3-D ”insights” into the internal organs – as well as cancerous-like growths --
of humanoid-like heads or disturbingly children-like bodies.
Then there’s Biosphere’s
We are Family, probably one of Piccinini’s most successful shows. One of the displays is a sculpture of a
human toddler, smiling gently and looking somewhere into the space. Right next to it, there’s a humanoid
creature, four-legged yet with an obvious ability to eventually be able to
stand on its hinder legs. The creature
has a long face, a long nose, small mouth and big, coal-black and life-like wet
big, round eyes. The creature is
flesh-coloured with some scarce hair on its back. It is shyly approaching the toddler who doesn’t pay any attention
to it, in that moment. The creature is
not scary-looking despite its obvious mutation or -- some may argue -- monstrosity. The
creature is almost pitiful-looking.
Apologetic, cute.
And this is one of the
examples that summarizes so well Piccinini’s artistic intent. She sees beauty in mutations and she wants
the viewer to be aware of their existence even though they do seem to co-exist
with the ugly (an unexpected outcome). Piccinini
lets the viewer have his own reaction to the art work and choose to be either
disturbed or sympathetic… or both. Whatever
the viewer ends up feeling about Piccinini’s monsters is his own
responsibility; coincidently just as artificially created universes – such
as genetic engineering experiments -- gone right or wrong are human
responsibilities too.
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