Year 12 Visual Art students were lucky enough to meet Australian artist Patricia Piccinini at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art recently. As part of their HSC course they have been looking at the role of art critics and how to write an exhibition review. There's nothing like getting out of the classroom and bringing the learning to life. The students went to see Piccinini's extensive solo exhibition and attend a Q&A with the artist herself. Meeting her and standing in front of her work was inspiring for these young artists and the studio has been abuzz with enthusiasm since the excursion. On returning to school each student wrote a review of the exhibition. The following review was written by Oceana Piccone.
A place where all mammals are one and equal
Walking through ‘Curious Affection’, Patricia Piccinini’s solo exhibition currently at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, GOMA , takes you on a journey through a bizarrely beautiful world and fills you with a sense of hope and wonder for the future. Her life-like sculptures made from silicone, human hair, leather and fibreglass, present an uncanny yet realistic vision of a world where humans and animals are one and the same and have heart warming relationships.
Piccinini has a design team that works together in the construction of these fantasy creatures and she displayed this well through video documentation in the gallery, acknowledging the importance of her team, but the idea behind it all is most important. She sees herself as a ‘meaning maker’. Piccinini conceives these concepts through life experiences and world issues that she is passionate about. Her beautiful yet confrontational, large scale sculptures express her love for the animal world, and the fact that our industrial needs are destroying their environments. She is interested in relationships of all kinds and the intimacy of love, that fragile state we are placed in once our heart becomes one with another.
The exhibition consists of sculptures the artist created over the last ten years alongside commissions created especially for GOMA. ‘Curious Affection’ is an immersive, multi-sensory environment, complete with a field of 3000 sculpted flowers and a large-scale inflatable sculpture suspended from the roof.
“This is a world where things mix and intermingle, where nothing stays in it’s place. It is a world where animal, plant, machine and human unite and commingle. We have to ask ourselves, if it is so hard to figure out where one thing starts and another ends, can we really continue to believe in the barriers that separate us. Connection and empathy are at the heart of my practice, and at the heart of this exhibition”. - Patricia Piccinini
A place where all mammals are one and equal
Walking through ‘Curious Affection’, Patricia Piccinini’s solo exhibition currently at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, GOMA , takes you on a journey through a bizarrely beautiful world and fills you with a sense of hope and wonder for the future. Her life-like sculptures made from silicone, human hair, leather and fibreglass, present an uncanny yet realistic vision of a world where humans and animals are one and the same and have heart warming relationships.
Piccinini has a design team that works together in the construction of these fantasy creatures and she displayed this well through video documentation in the gallery, acknowledging the importance of her team, but the idea behind it all is most important. She sees herself as a ‘meaning maker’. Piccinini conceives these concepts through life experiences and world issues that she is passionate about. Her beautiful yet confrontational, large scale sculptures express her love for the animal world, and the fact that our industrial needs are destroying their environments. She is interested in relationships of all kinds and the intimacy of love, that fragile state we are placed in once our heart becomes one with another.
The exhibition consists of sculptures the artist created over the last ten years alongside commissions created especially for GOMA. ‘Curious Affection’ is an immersive, multi-sensory environment, complete with a field of 3000 sculpted flowers and a large-scale inflatable sculpture suspended from the roof.
“This is a world where things mix and intermingle, where nothing stays in it’s place. It is a world where animal, plant, machine and human unite and commingle. We have to ask ourselves, if it is so hard to figure out where one thing starts and another ends, can we really continue to believe in the barriers that separate us. Connection and empathy are at the heart of my practice, and at the heart of this exhibition”. - Patricia Piccinini
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