Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, July 8, 2026 : Patricia Piccinini, an Australian sculptor (#2573)

Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Artist of the Day, July 8, 2026 : Patricia Piccinini, an Australian sculptor (#2573)

Patricia Piccinini was born in Sierra Leone and lives in Australia. Her work encompasses sculpture, photography, video and drawing and her practice examines the increasingly nebulous boundary between the artificial and the natural as it appears in contemporary culture and ideas. Her surreal drawings, hybrid animals and vehicular creatures question the way that contemporary technology and culture changes our understanding of what it means to be human and wonders at our relationships with – and responsibilities towards – that which we create. While ethics are central, her approach is ambiguous and questioning rather than moralistic and didactic.

“My practice is focused on bodies and relationships; the relationships between people and other creatures, between people and our bodies, between creatures and the environment, between the artificial and the natural. I am particularly interested in the way that the everyday realities of the world around us change these relations. Perhaps because of this, many have looked at my practice in terms of science and technology, however, for me it is just as informed by Surrealism and mythology. My work aims to shift the way that people look at the world around them and question their assumptions about the relationships they have with the world.” — Patricia Piccinini

In 2003 her exhibition We Are Family represented Australia at the 50th Venice Biennale before touring to the Hara Museum, Tokyo (JPN) and the Bendigo Art Gallery, (AUS). Her solo museum survey exhibitions ComCiência at CCBB toured to São Paulo, Brasília, Rio De Janeiro and Belo Horizonte in Brazil and was named the most popular contemporary art exhibition in 2016 by The Art Newspaper.

Patricia Piccinini received a BFA from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne in 1991. In 1994 she initiated The Basement Project Gallery in Melbourne, which she coordinated until 1996. In 2014 she was awarded the Melbourne Art Foundation Visual Arts Award. In 2016 she was awarded a Doctor of Visual and Performing Arts (Honora Causa) from the Victorian College of the Arts and was an Enterprise Professor at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne from 2017-2023. She is currently a Professor of Practice at RMIT University since 2025. Her studio and home are on Melbourne, Australia.

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