Fairy Tales: Life at the margins

In the world of the fairy tale, witches and crones are not the only characters who generate mistrust and fear — ‘others’, outsiders and so-called misfits pushed to the margins of society, figure prominently in many tales. In these stories, people living outside the norm are branded as villains or monsters. The Beast from ‘Beauty…

Looking at Patricia Piccinini’s monsters looking at us

Our culture — its art, music, theology and techno-science — is filled with the promises of monsters, that is to say, the irreverent energy of those who deviate from prescriptive normality.1 Known for her imaginative lifelike creatures, visit ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ at GOMA until 5 August 2018, and ponder our place in a world…

Turning bats into fungi: Watch as we install Patricia Piccinini’s Grotto

Patricia Piccinini has terraformed her suite of immersive multisensory installations at GOMA during ‘Curious Affection‘ to resemble earth – however she has taken every freedom, turning flowers into flesh, torsos into trees, and bats into fungi – and vice versa. Brimming with fertility, Piccinini conjures a sense of how very different our world could be if…

The peace between lightning and thunder: Watch as we install Patricia Piccinini’s diorama

Known for her imaginative, yet strangely familiar, hybrid creatures, Patricia Piccinini uses sculpture, installation, and sound in her fantastical diorama to realise a compassionate vision inspired by science, and mythology. As you wander through ‘Curious Affection’ you can hear Francois Tetaz’s wistful and wondrous soundscape before entering Piccinini’s The peace between lightning and thunder – an unexpected…

Watch as we install Patricia Piccinini’s multisensory field of flowers

The Field, a multisensory installation in ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection’ is both a great artistic, and engineering, accomplishment that captivates all who enter the exhibition. This ambitious new commission for the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) is populated with the enchanting and enigmatic creatures for which Piccinini is renowned, but uniquely they sit in a…