Patricia PICCININI

(born 1965 Freetown, Sierra Leone)

Piccinini, who studied economic history and painting, is an Australian artist who creates intermediary beings out of silicone and plastic that are either half animal and half human, or are combinations of the cyber-technological and the human. At first glance, these hyperrealistic deformed figures, with their hairy body parts and their sticky inside-out bits, seem sinister and inaccessible. The artist, however, imbues her cross-bred beings with a sense of human dignity thereby rendering them accessible to the viewer. Her work poses fundamental ethical and moral questions about the value of life, and explores definitions about what might constitute life at the very boundaries between nature, technology, birth, creation and death.

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Search for works by this artist in the national collection.

Patricia PICCININI
Bootflower 2015
Courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco Collection of Detached Cultural Organisation, Hobart

Patricia PICCININI
Meadow 2017
Collection of the artist

Patricia PICCININI
The long awaited 2008
Courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco Collection of Detached Cultural Organisation, Hobart

Patricia PICCININI
The breathing room 2000
Courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco Collection of the artist

Patricia PICCININI
The welcome guest 2011
Courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco Collection of the artist