We
Are Family brings a fresh, personal perspective to some of the
most difficult ethical issues of our time: What is normal? Who controls
life? What is the nature of our relationship with animals? Are some
lives worth more than others? What constitutes a family?
Piccinini uses plastic, paint and computer pixels to mimic the generative
potential of biological substances. Her works animate the promise
and the perils of the runaway scientific developments that pervade
our time, bringing a deeply personal perspective to current ethical
debates on medical interventions: What constitutes a human being?
Where does one species end and the other begin? Who takes responsibility
for the life they create?
Her sculpted figures are presented as ordinary beings with impulses
to love and play. At the same time they are animated by the stranger,
more deformed aspects of their being. Normal becomes mutant, and
vice versa - within this world there is an acceptance that each
defines the other. Piccinini presents the ill-favoured in such a
way that we are bound to see their potential for success. Although
the figures are odd or ugly, they are always worthy of care, attention
and love.
Piccinini's work engages us because it does not take sides, though
it draws from the hope and fear that underpin our fascination with
genetic engineering. Her works give life to a potentially scary
future, while also asserting the redemptive power of social values
and relationships. Our horror of humans combining with other species,
for example, is considerably softened or sidetracked by the image
of Piccinini's profoundly sad and patient trans-species mother suckling
her young. This and other works prompt us to ask: Who are 'we' and
what is a family?
Patricia Piccinini: We Are Family is a joint project of the
Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, the Australia Council for the Arts,
the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body, the
Australia-Japan Foundation, the Australian Embassy Tokyo, and The
Asialink Centre of The University of Melbourne.
The exhibition was Australia's representation at the 2003 Venice
Biennale [Curator: Linda Michael; Commissioner: Victoria Lynn] and
is supported by "Ancient*Future - Australian Arts Festival Japan
2003" and the Australia-Japan Foundation/Asialink Australia-Japan
Art Exhibitions Program. Global
Art Projects (GAP) was the Exhibition Manager for Patricia
Piccinini: We Are Family at the Venice Biennale.
For more information about Patricia Piccinini: We Are Family at
the Venice Biennale please contact: Australia Council for the Arts
PO Box 788, Strawberry Hills, Sydney, 2012, NSW, Australia Telephone:
+ 61 2 9215 9000 Facsimile: + 61 2 9215 9111 Email: venice2003@ozco.gov.au
Visit www.patriciapiccinini.net
and www.ozco.gov.au/venice
for more information about Patricia Piccinini's work and We Are
Family.
Patricia Piccinini
Trained as a painter in the early 1980s, Melbourne-based Patricia
Piccinini began her career with drawings and paintings based on
anatomical studies. These and later works emerge from a deep personal
understanding of the issues involved in medical intervention in
human life. Today Piccinini collaborates with a wide range of specialists
to realise her ideas, and works across a remarkable range of media,
including sculpture, photography, film and installation.
'Atmosphere', 'autosphere' and 'biosphere' are terms the artist
has used to describe areas of her practice. Her atmospheric works
focus on creating a feeling sensation in the viewer; her automotive
forms are styled as love objects; and her creatures are the result
of a search for new improved beings. All these works share an ability
to inspire deeply ambivalent emotions.
For over a decade Piccinini has made creatures for her 'biosphere',
the focus of her exhibition We Are Family. She created an
embryonic LUMP in pig flesh in 1994, and since then has made
photographs, videos and sculptures that represent or embody synthetic
life-forms: from LUMP to SO2 (inspired by scientists who
synthesised DNA to create SO1, or Synthetic Organism) to
the 'stem cells' and 'clones' in this exhibition.
Piccinini has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally.
She has had solo exhibitions at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography in Japan, the Centro de Artes Visuales in Lima, Peru,
the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and the Australia Centre
for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Her work has been shown in the
Sydney, Berlin, Gwang'ju and Liverpool biennales and in Song
of the Earth, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel. In 2002 she participated
in the opening exhibition of the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art,
and her installation Sandman was displayed at the newly opened
National Gallery of Victoria. Piccinini's exhibition We Are Family
has been selected to represent Australia at the 50th Biennale of
Venice in 2003, where it will be exhibited from 15 June - 2 November
before travelling to Japan.
Curator
Linda Michael is curator of the exhibition We Are Family.
Senior curator at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Michael
was previously at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney.
She has worked extensively with Piccinini, and included her work
in MCA exhibitions Photography is Dead! Long Live Photography!
in 1996 and Natural Selection in 1997, and organised her
participation in Song of the Earth, Kassel, Germany.
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