In the studio we use a pretty wide range of materials for the sculptures; silicone, fibreglass, human and animal hair, ABS plastic, dental acrylic, traditional and high-tech plasters, stainless steel, automotive paint, plywood, Britannia metal, found objects and taxidermy animals.

Patricia Piccinini

Categorized in : Animal Hair Found Objects

I think people perceive my creatures as absurd because they look different, but at the same time, they are a little bit familiar. I want people to feel a kind of empathy with them. When you think about it, all nature is kind of strange looking.. in fact, I'm a strange a looking creature.

Patricia Piccinini

differences nature thinking

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.

Patricia Piccinini

body practice people

The illusion of life is crucial for the work, otherwise the ideas wouldn't be able to jump across, people wouldn't engage with it.

Patricia Piccinini

able people ideas

Most of the work I make uses materials that are a bit outside of the traditional fine art world.

Patricia Piccinini

use world art

How does contemporary technology and culture changes our understanding of what it means to be human. What is our relationship with - and responsibilities towards - that which we create.

Patricia Piccinini

technology responsibility mean

Artists make worlds for people to walk through.

Patricia Piccinini

artist people world

I work with whatever mediums seems best suited to evoking the sorts of thoughts and emotions I am interested in playing with.

Patricia Piccinini

thoughts-and-emotions mediums emotion

I usually have several things on the go. Whether it is my own drawings for the next work that I am working on while a sculpture is being fabricated or several works at different points in production.

Patricia Piccinini

sculpture drawing different

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.

Patricia Piccinini

mythology technology practice

I am particularly interested in the way that the everyday realities of the world around us change these relations.

Patricia Piccinini

everyday reality world

The idea that we can have a new life form, what does it say about the zoo's main purpose, which is to preserve life? What does it say when the artificial and real animal can have the same attraction to people?

Patricia Piccinini

real animal zoos

I struggle in life to find a sense of joy in things.

Patricia Piccinini

life-struggle struggle joy

I certainly don't see the humour in my work as something that detracts from its seriousness. It's just a way of making difficult messages more palatable.

Patricia Piccinini

humour messages way

I don't set out to make something that is repulsive and that would scare people. I know that some people don't like what I make, and don't find it cute, but that's hard for me to understand.

Patricia Piccinini

scare cute people

I feel that there's hardly any irony in my work; if there's anything, there'll be sincerity, which people sometimes find hard to deal with.

Patricia Piccinini

irony sometimes people

I would say my work is anti-ironic.

Patricia Piccinini

ironic

Ideas rather than methods are central to they way I work, although drawing plays a central generative role in everything I do.

Patricia Piccinini

drawing play ideas

I don't think 'Dark Heart' has to be malevolent. It conveys a sense of depth. There is a sense of questioning turmoil.

Patricia Piccinini

dark heart thinking

I don't want the ideas to be limited by what I can physically do. The ideas come first.

Patricia Piccinini

want ideas firsts

In one hundred years time people will look back and think 'these people were really worried about the environment, they were looking at things to do with global warming, and this is why they were making work about these issues'.

Patricia Piccinini

issues years thinking