Patricia Piccinini
My practice is focused on bodies and relationships, the relationships between people and other creatures, between people and our bodies, between creatures and the environment, between the artificial and the natural. I am particularly interested in the way that the everyday realities of the world around us change these relations. Perhaps because of this, many have looked at my practice in terms of science and technology, however, for me it is just as informed by Surrealism and mythology. My work aims to shift the way that people look at the world around them and question their assumptions about the relationships they have with the world.
b. 1965, Sierra Leone
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Patricia Piccinini is an internationally acclaimed Australian contemporary artist. Working in a broad range of media, she has produced an extraordinary body of work since graduating from Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts in 1991. Prolific in output, Piccinini’s exhibition history is extensive, with shows in notable museums, galleries, and art fairs in many different parts of the world. Through this, she has developed a global profile.
Piccinini is best known for her anthropomorphic figurative sculptures, though her practice extends into a diverse range of media including drawing, photography, video, and large-scale installation. Her work explores contemporary technologies and their implications for human culture and ethics. Her position on this field of enquiry is not didactic, retaining an inquisitive view of human relationships with technologies and other species.
Piccinini’s major accomplishments include the exhibition We are Family, which was shown in the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and her museum survey exhibition ComCiência, which toured Brazil, showing in São Paulo, Brasília, Rio De Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. It was named the most popular contemporary art exhibition in 2016 by The Art Newspaper.
Gow Langsford Gallery has represented Patricia Piccinini since 2023.
