“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"

Patricia Piccinini is a contemporary artist who is interested in what it means to be alive in the present day. She creates a world somewhere between the one we know and one that is almost upon us. She focuses on the emotional lives of the new creatures that might emerge, along with our relationships with them and with nature. Her world is one of questions rather than answers. Instead of telling the viewer what to think she asks them how they feel when confronted by possibilities. Patricia has exhibited all over the world, including the Venice Biennale, and in 2013 created the Skywhale for the Centenary of Canberra. Her most recent exhibition, “A Miracle Constantly Repeated” takes place in the abandoned ballroom above Flinders Street Station in Melbourne.

Patricia Piccinini was born in Sierra Leone and lives in Melbourne. She has a Doctor of Visual and Performing Arts (Honora Causa) from The University of Melbourne, Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts and Bachelor of Arts in Economic History from the Australian National University. Piccinini is Enterprise Professor in Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

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.

In 2003 her exhibition We Are Family represented Australia at the 50th Venice Biennale before touring to the Hara Museum, Tokyo. Other solo museum exhibitions include ComCiência at CCBB Brazil, Curious Affection at QAGOMA in Brisbane, En Kaerlig Verden at Arken in Copenhagen, Hold Me Close To Your Heart at Arter Space For Art, Istanbul, Once Upon a Time at AGSA, as well as numerous solo and group shows and Biennials in Europe, UK, USA, South America, Asia and Australia. Notable groups exhibitions include The Universe and Art at Mori Art Museum, Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum and Face Up at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2013 she was commissioned by the Centenary of Canberra to create The Skywhale.