national gallery of Australia

According to the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia: "Piccinini has an ambivalent attitude towards technology and she uses her artistic practice as a forum for discussion about how technology impacts upon life. She is keenly interested in how contemporary ideas of nature, the natural and the artificial are changing our society. Specific works have addressed concerns about biotechnology, such as gene therapy and ongoing research to map the human genome... she is also fascinated by the mechanisms of consumer culture."
Piccinini's work often anthropomorphises inanimate objects and presents them with a high degree of industrial finish, revealing the equal influence of 19th Century Surrealism and 20th Century advertising.
Piccinini works with several fabricators to produce her works.

I was very impressed with this artwork as it really drew me in. Having the idea of mechanic machines been given human qualities was a very creative approach. Patricia's work would be my favourite of the day. As i gathered information about her on the net i saw some of her other work, she is an amazing artist and is very creative.

"The Stage" 2008 which is the series we saw at the Gallery was amazing with the bicycle lights as eyes and the wheels as arms and feet. I really enjoyed viewing this artwork, and would love to view all her works.

national gallery if Australia

Fiona HALL
born 1953 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
England, Europe 1976-78
United States 1979-82

Paradisus Terrestris 1989-90
twenty-three sculptures from the series

Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Sculpture, aluminium, tineach approx. 24.5 h x 11.0 w x 1.5 d cm

Purchased 1994

Accession No: NGA 94.244.A-W

The series is informed by the artist’s extensive research into botanical depictions. While the title is based on John Parkinson’s florilegium Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris (1629), Hall was drawn to other examples, such as Robert John Thornton’s The temple of flora (1807). She was also fascinated by the history of ideas around plants, including systems of classification first devised by scholars such as Carolus Linnaeus in the eighteenth century that were based on looking at the male and female components of each plant. As Hall has explained: ‘At the time of his findings … people still believed that the Garden of Eden existed somewhere on earth. So they were shocked when he talked about plants in overtly sexual terms.’ Hall has also been interested in current findings that show there are more genetic similarities than differences between humans and the plant world.

This work caught by eye by shock and grabbed my attention once i had realise what was within the tins rather then the plants above them. The idea of linking human aspects to plants was very creative. This art work in fact was one of my favourites as it grabbed my attention and made me think about what this was all about and what the artist might have been thinking in the process of the creation.

Some people may think its crude and rude yet it is an aspect of life and as read above it is linked to the garden of Eden, just in a different aspect.

I enjoyed contemplating about this artwork.

Gallery

Braidwood