Please note that this is an overdue event

HOPE—Patricia Piccinini

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Tai Kwun Contemporary is excited to announce HOPE — a large-scale summer exhibition of the sculptures, paintings and moving image works by the renowned Australian artist Patricia Piccinini from 24 May to 3 September.

Best known for her hyper-realistic sculptures whose human scale and touchingly expressive features belie their non-human limbs, fins, wings and scales — cute, intriguing, grotesque — Piccinini’s vision explores the unexpected consequences of tampering with nature. Featuring more than 50 fascinatingly detailed and highly imaginative works across different media, including paintings and moving images in addition to her distinctive sculptural works, HOPE offers visitors an engrossing, perplexing and deeply touching view of a fantastical imaginary world, yet one with which we identify naturally and instinctively.

Piccinini has been featured in many highly successful exhibitions around the world, including a pavilion presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2003. While her work raises questions about scientific progress and mankind’s destructive power over nature, a resilient optimism shines through as the scale and expressiveness of her works speak of tenderness, care and empathy.

HOPE is Patricia Piccinini’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong and encompasses all of the gallery spaces of JC Contemporary. Among the largest works in the show is Celestial Fields — a vast immersive installation comprising 4,500 individual flower stems sprouting both upwards from the floor and downwards from the ceiling, drawing the visitor into its embrace where it poses questions on the nature of progress. Elsewhere, Piccinini responds to the signature spiral staircase of JC Contemporary with a 20-metre-high installation of multi-coloured wigs spun together and suspended down the void from the ceiling of the top floor.

Ultimately, much of Patricia Piccinini’s work explores the notion of interdependence: the interdependence between humans and artificial objects — such as shoes, cradles, chairs — or the interdependence between humans and other creatures. The artist is fascinated by what she calls “artificial nature”: she imagines awe-inspiring and somewhat unsettling mixtures of creatures, where humans may be combined with living beings concocted in the imagination — or in the laboratory. These “chimeras” fundamentally ask questions about how technological advances are opening new horizons, given that humanity appears to be on the cusp of being able to design and create new forms of life and new forms of living-mechanical hybrids. For the artist, this prospect triggers both hope and anxiety about the nature of progress; at the same time, the artist imagines how living with such creatures will demand love, care, and empathy — the same love and care that humanity is morally compelled to show to other living creatures we share the planet with. Visitors to HOPE will therefore not only experience the artist’s spectacular vision but will also be invited to delve more deeply into broader questions about progress, science and technology, as well as the ethics of care.

“After last year’s wildly popular Behind Your Eyelid summer exhibition, we are honoured to present another spectacularly large-scale exhibition by such a legendary artist at Tai Kwun Contemporary. Our preconceived notions about biology are challenged by Piccinini's works, which force us to confront the limits of genetic experimentation, technology, the arts, and, of course, humanity itself. Moreover, this exhibition reflects a longer cycle where Tai Kwun Contemporary explores the notion of ‘future bodies’ and the question of nature. HOPE will offer an artistic response — or perhaps rather than an answer, the artist poses more questions about the state of science and technology and progress in the world today,” said Tobias Berger, Curator of HOPE — Patricia Piccinini.

Image Credit: Tai Kwun