CAIRNS CITY.- Patricia Piccinini opened a new solo exhibition at Cairns Art Gallery last week, including several brand new sculptures, two of which are pictured here.

The artist describes her practice as ‘focused on bodies and relationships: relationships between people and other creatures, between people and bodies, between the artificial and the natural, between creatures and the environment.’ This question of our place in the environment is key to this exhibition, as well as our relationship to – and our responsibilities towards – the other creatures we share it with. Piccinini wonders what happens to us if we recognise that we are just one animal among many, and that our fate and theirs are tied together.

Piccinini’s works are drawn from the real world but they are often not anything that we recognise. Their strangeness challenges our acceptance of the different. They are hybrids drawn from the animal world and beyond, but somehow, we can see ourselves in them.

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 questions how we can cope with the overwhelming challenges facing it.

Perhaps because she is drawn to advances in genetics and the natural world, many people have looked at her practice in terms of science and technology. However, it is just as informed by Surrealism and mythology. What interests Piccinini is creating stories that reflect what it’s like to be alive today. She is drawn to the complexity that arises when the rational, the emotional and the ethical collide.

Patricia Piccinini will close this year's Tolarno Galleries program with an exhibition of new automotive works, 9 November – 14 December 2019.