Patricia Piccinini

No Fear of Depths

18 Feb –
16 Apr 2023

Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist who is internationally recognised for her hyper-realistic works that amaze and confound while simultaneously prompting emotions of horror, wonderment and compassion.

Piccinini works across a variety of media and her works are drawn from the real world, but they are manipulated to become creatures that are unlike anything that we can recognise as being real.  Her works are informed by research and a desire to understand and give form to ‘unexpected consequences’. She explains,

What interests me is creating stories that reflect what it’s like to be alive today. I am drawn to the complexity that arises when the rational, the emotional and the ethical collide.

As a result of a Gallery initiated research residency in Far North Queensland, Piccinini created a major body of work that explored the specificity and fecundity of tropical life forms in our region. No Fear of Depths is an extraordinary work from this series that was first exhibited in the Gallery’s Life Clings Closest exhibition in 2019 and was subsequently purchased for the Gallery’s Collection.

No Fear of Depths explores the relationships between the artificial and the natural, humans and the environment, and the relationships within families and how they interact with strangers and ‘difference’.

Piccinini explains that the work is about a girl is transitioning towards adulthood, and the creature who holds her appears to be caught at an evolutionary point between the land and the sea. ‘It is a gentle scene, she says, ‘and it reminds us that we are nurtured by the nature around us.’ 

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About the Artist
Past Exhibitions

Resources & Publications

Exhibition Publication: Life Clings Closest

Artist Talk: Life Clings Closest

 

 

Patricia Piccinini, No Fear of depths 2019, silicone, fibreglass, hair, clothing, 150 x 150 x 110 cm. Purchased Cairns Art Gallery and Cairns Art Gallery Foundation, 2019 © Patricia Piccinini

 

About the Artist | Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini was born in Sierra Leone and lives in Australia. Her work encompasses sculpture, photography, video and drawing and her practice examines the increasingly nebulous boundary between the artificial and the natural as it appears in contemporary culture and ideas.

Her surreal drawings, hybrid animals and vehicular creatures question the way that contemporary technology and culture changes our understanding of what it means to be human and wonders at our relationships with – and responsibilities towards – that which we create. While ethics are central, her approach is ambiguous and questioning rather than moralistic and didactic.

“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.”

 

 

Past Exhibitions | Cairns Art Gallery

 

Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography Patricia Piccinini, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, Cairns Show Grounds 2022. A National Gallery of Australia Touring Event presented by the Cairns Art Gallery in partnership with Festival Cairns the Cairns Council. Photograph: Blueclick Photography

Patricia Piccinini
Skywhales: Every Heart Sings 
3 Sep 2022

Patricia Piccinini's Skywhalepapa is a monumental sculpture in the form of a hot-air balloon and a new companion piece to Skywhale – together they form a skywhale family. The National Gallery’s touring event Skywhales: Every Hearts Sings celebrates the extraordinary diversity of nature while raising complex questions about evolution, transmutation, and gendered parenting roles in our world today.

View exhibition  

Patricia Piccinini: Life Clings Closest installation, Cairns Art Gallery 2019. Photo: Peter Hennessey, Drome Studio Patricia Piccinini: Life Clings Closest installation, Cairns Art Gallery 2019. Photo: Peter Hennessey, Drome Studio Patricia Piccinini: Life Clings Closest installation, Cairns Art Gallery 2019. Photo: Peter Hennessey, Drome Studio Patricia Piccinini: Life Clings Closest installation, Cairns Art Gallery 2019. Photo: Peter Hennessey, Drome Studio Patricia Piccinini: Life Clings Closest installation, Cairns Art Gallery 2019. Photo: Peter Hennessey, Drome Studio Patricia Piccinini: Life Clings Closest installation, Cairns Art Gallery 2019. Photo: Peter Hennessey, Drome Studio Patricia Piccinini: Life Clings Closest installation, Cairns Art Gallery 2019. Photo: Peter Hennessey, Drome Studio

Patricia Piccinini
Life Clings Closest
22 Aug – 8 Dec 2019

This exhibition brings together works from the last twenty years of Piccinini’s practice, as well as a new group of works inspired by the unique environment of Far North Queensland. These works celebrate the wondrous ecology of the area, but also wonders at how we can cope with the overwhelming challenges facing it.

View exhibition

 

 

IMAGE:

1. Patricia PICCININI
No fear of depths 2019
silicone, fibreglass, hair, clothing
150 x 150 x 110 cm.
Purchased Cairns Art Gallery and Cairns Art Gallery Foundation, 2019
© Patricia Piccinini 

 

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The Cairns Art Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website may contain images, names or voices of deceased persons in photographs, film or text.

The Cairns Art Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website may contain images, names or voices of deceased persons in photographs, film or text.