Patricia is one of Australia’s most recognised and accomplished artists and we’re thrilled to be hosting this nationally acclaimed exhibition at a time when young people are on school holidays. Entry to our Galleries is free and this exhibition will be a major arts attraction for Cairns community and visitors this summer.’ said NorthSite Contemporary Arts Director, Ashleigh Campbell.
‘As a one of few independent contemporary visual arts institutions north of Brisbane, this organisation has advocated, demonstrated resilience and excellence over decades, championing artists of the North and presenting boundary-pushing programs through an experimental ethos relevant to a wide region’.
‘It is exciting to have QAGOMA Project Officer Henri Van Noordenburg and other leaders from Queensland Art Gallery, visiting Cairns for the exhibition and sharing their insights with our audiences’.
Patricia Piccinini (b.1965) invites audiences to think about their place in a world where advances in biotechnology and digital technologies blur the lines between human, nature and the artificial world.
The artist’s fascination with these boundaries and relationships led The New York Times to describe her creations as ‘sculptures of life forms that don’t exist’ – her lifelike hybrid creatures seamlessly blend human, animal and machine elements to reveal life forms that are extraordinarily familiar.
Piccinini said, ‘I am interested in relations: the relationship between the artificial and the natural, between humans and the environment. The relationships between beings, within families and between strangers. And the relationship between the audience and the artwork.’
Curatorial Manager of Australian Art, QAGOMA, and curator of ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection On Tour’ Peter McKay said the exhibition would tour to six regional Queensland centres from early 2020 through to 2022.
‘Patricia Piccinini is one of the most exciting and challenging Australian artists working today. Following the success of her major solo exhibition ‘Curious Affection’ at GOMA in 2018, we are thrilled to be taking a selection of sculpture, photography and video works to our intrastate audiences.
‘Influenced by science, nature, fiction and the unconscious, Patricia’s ongoing concern is the social impact and moral responsibility of advanced technology on people, animals and our planet.
‘Her fantastical creatures and environments are, in a way, propositions about possible futures’ Mr McKay said.
Through this exhibition of recent and major new work, audiences will enter Patricia’s world, a place where the conventional boundaries between reality and artifice are unstable, and our intrigue and curiosity are pulled into the space between.
‘The works engage you on an emotional level. The social conditions that surround Piccinini’s creatures elicit an empathetic response, while their physical appearance challenges conventional notions of beauty. Together, these aspects invite audiences to look beyond strangeness to consider the intrinsic value of others however great their difference. Mr McKay said.
Highlights include a major new work titled The Couple 2018, a sculpture of two figures inside a tent in a loving embrace and Teenage Metamorphosis 2017, a curious little creature reclining on a towel listening to the radio and reading Kafka.
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