Moving art that explores boundaries between natural and artificial worlds

And the ‘children’ in the recognisable, yet fantastical worlds of Piccinini’s surreal sculptures are completely lifelike, from their sparkling eyes to the little moles on their arms and the cuticles on their nails.

These children are in bizarre situations – in The Welcome Guest a little girl standing on a bed is gazing into the eyes of a creature, part sloth part mutant, while a pheasant stands aloof at the end of the bed.

In The Long Awaited a little boy and an animal – part human, part dugong (a sea mammal) are snuggled together on a bench, eyes closed, oblivious to the world around them. It’s a demonstration of total trust and it’s a favourite of Patricia’s as it’s all about someone allowing someone else to love them.

The Observer sees a little boy on top of a leaning stack of chairs, perched there so delicately that one viewer had an urge to tell him ‘come down from there in case you hurt yourself’.

If that were the extent of Australian artist Piccinini’s work, she’d have Galway audiences eating out of her hands by now. But there’s more – further down the gallery, shiny metal dominates as two Vespa scooters get up close and personal in the Lovers while wall pieces, a mix of the natural and surreal, explore orifices, sexuality and endangered species.

And there are two video installations, both equally strange, that raise unsettling questions about their subjects.

These various works are made with vastly different materials, but all explore the same themes, explains Patricia over a coffee in a restaurant beside the gallery.

“My world is where the artificial and natural come together – where the boundaries collapse a bit. That’s where everything in this exhibition comes from,” she explains

The boundaries between nature and science are a particular preoccupation of this softly spoken artist, whose background is part Irish, part Italian.

“It’s how responsible we are about what we do,” she says of humanity’s approach to nature and the environment.

Her most recent work is the film installation Tender, showing in the Festival Gallery, about an ordinary young couple who seem to be embarking on a very intimate moment. But as we follow them to a bedroom, we realise all is not what it seems, as the woman is nurturing mutant infants on the bed. We don’t know if the pair are engaged in scientific research, or a hobby, or something clandestine, but it makes us question what is going on here.

Tender was inspired by an event in Australia where a couple hired a woman in India to carry an IVF baby for them, as they were unable to conceive, explains Patricia. When they travelled to India to collect the baby, they learned the woman had borne twins. They left one behind, the one they didn’t want. Patricia was sufficiently shaken to create this piece in response.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.