EXHIBITION: PATRICIA PICCININI

It’s not the kind of newborn you’d normally welcome home from the hospital. With a radish-like nose, pupal limbs and no discernible genitalia, it is somehow still rather endearing. Patricia Piccinini delicately treads this scalpel-sharp line between alien and familiar, lifelike and bizarre in her latest solo exhibition of silicone-rendered sculptures at Roslyn Oxley9, Beyond our Kin. She says, “I am fascinated by the narrative and ethical repercussions ensuing from our increasingly sophisticated understanding of and interventions into the structure of life.” It’s a structure that Piccinini, who has represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, clearly believes is rather precarious. A small boy vigilantly perches above an unstable stack of mass-produced chairs in The Observer, while The Strength of One Arm finds a flippered gymnast swinging calmly over a Canadian Mountain Goat. On what path are we placing our children? What becomes of nature when it is denaturalised? Crucially, while strange, all the scenes are extremely lifelike. In The Comforter, a hairy but beautiful young girl cuddles an amorphous blob of fat – as if to say, our future may be faceless, but we will need to learn to love it nonetheless.

Until Dec 4, Roslyn Oxley9, 8 Soudan Ln, Paddington, 9331 1919, roslynoxley9.com.au