Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini, Car Nuggets GL (installation view), 2001

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Patricia Piccinini (b.1965, Sierre Leone) migrated to Australia as a child and she lives and works in Melbourne. Her practice has gradually moved from painting towards sculpture, digital photography and video installation.

In recent years, Piccinini has collaborated with professional car modellers and custom painters to make objects out of fibreglass and ABS plastic, each immaculately finished with a lustrous layer of automotive paint.

In all her work, Piccinini is interested in the way that contemporary technology is creating a world where the supposed dichotomy between the artificial and the natural is no longer real or relevant. In other works she has created baby trucks, mutant designer babies, genetically engineered animals and computer-generated landscapes. With Car Nuggets, she takes a slightly different track, attempting to synthesise the essence of consumer desire and seduction in the form of the car stripped of all function. 

However, she never tries to lecture her audience about what is right and wrong in the world, but rather she explores the ways in which so much of our increasingly hybrid world is simultaneously right and wrong. Piccinini loves her Car Nuggets but acknowledges that their beauty is only as deep as their toxic automotive paint surfaces and hollow fiberglass shells.

Patricia Piccinini at Liverpool Biennial 2002

Car Nuggets GL, 2001
Amazon
Blue Murder
Heart Breaker
Heaven Bound
Passion Flower
Pocito Locito
Tequila Sunrise
Fibreglass and automotive paint
Exhibited at Tate Liverpool