“The machinery faintly purred, as the hum and rattle… stirred the air.”
-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Concerned with the relationship between scientific progress and ethical boundaries, Patricia Piccinini’s art explores contemporary issues towards nature and its role within our consumerist and technologically driven society. Piccinini considers the definition of “natural” in today’s digital age, using art to blur the boundaries between what we think is natural and what we know is artificial.
Since the early 1990s Piccinini has been fascinated by contemporary science and has used a range of mediums such as sculpture, computer manipulation, digital photography and video installation within her art practice. The use of digital technologies within her work not only complements her art aesthetically but also reinforces it conceptually, as it is concerned with the convergence of nature and technology in the 21st century. Piccinini is becoming internationally known for her creations of ‘sub-species’ that form a questionable “naturalness” for the viewer that is both disturbing, and unfamiliarly beautiful. Pulsating with life, yet ironically artificial- these foreign creatures appear to fit naturally within our technologically saturated world. The sculptures’ alien appearance confronts us, yet their intricate facial expressions and bodily gestures suggest that they are no more scared or vulnerable than we are. Their vulnerability is reinforced through physical and emotional states of exposure, as their natural realism allows us to experience the creatures’ private moments of relaxation and intimacy. However the creatures’ presence within our environment is capable of generating conflicting reactions such as affection and repulsion, empathy and unease; as our relationship to them is paradoxically both maternal and manufactured.
Piccinini’s sculptures symbolize a prediction into the future world of cloning, as the prospective of such creatures not only seems possible, but dangerously inevitable. Although Piccinini’s work confronts the growing concern of technology, she is surprisingly optimistic towards technological growth and has an open-minded perspective. Her main concern is not the advancement of technologies, but the effect that is has on the natural world and its rhythms. Piccinini uses her art to confront audiences to how conceptual and ethical issues within the 21st century are often transformed by emotional realities and it is through such concepts that we are forced to contemplate the consequences of scientific intervention within natural creation.
Piccinini’s work will be exhibited in Sydney at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery from the 11th of November until the 4th of December 2010. The works on display will be Piccinini’s most recent sculptures that will follow her distinct figurative style and installations. Even though the works are not yet explicit, we can only predict that whatever content or genetically modified sub-species Piccinini has created; it will not disappoint. Whether it is a synthetic landscape filled with shiny metallic ‘blobs’ or a family of artificial life forms, Patricia Piccinini creates a world in which fact, fiction and fantasy intertwine.
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