The Carrier, Patricia Piccinini
AUSTRALIAN artist Patricia Piccinini is currently exhibiting her first UK solo show at London gallery Haunch of Venison. A mix of five new large-scale sculptural works with earlier works from 2005 to 2011, the exhibition seeks to explore both our desire to humanise technology and perfect or homogenise the human body, and challenges our capacity to accept those who don’t measure up to a manufactured idea of perfection.
Piccinini, who has exhibited internationally as well as in Australia at major museums and biennials, is fascinated with both medical science and bio technology and how the subject can be used to explore the fears and concerns of modern society, such as appearance, ageing and disease.
The characters in Piccinini’s stories are alien creatures, mutated animal/human hybrids and startlingly lifelike – they simultaneously attract and unsettle the viewer. Her work ultimately questions the way that contemporary technology and culture changes an understanding of what it means to be human and the relationships with, and responsibilities towards, the things mankind creates in the name of progress.
Contemporary art gallery Haunch of Venison supports and presents the work of some of today’s leading artists, presenting a broad and critically acclaimed program of exhibitions in their exhibition spaces in London and New York. Founded in 2002, it was named after the London courtyard in which the gallery space is based.
Patricia Piccinini: Those Who Dream By Night is exhibiting until 12 January 2013 at Haunch of Venison, 103 New Bond Street, London W1S 1ST.
Suspended in a radiance, Patricia Piccinini
