"The Young Family"

I looked at all of the pictures in the "We are family" exhibit with the sozlet, and her reaction was interesting. She really wanted to label them. This one was a big mama camel with baby camels. (??) The meerkat-types ("Leather landscape", I think) were monkeys. (Makes sense.) The "Still life with stem cells" stem cells were ducks.

I think some of her points are relevant to Setanta's "HORROR" discussion. Will give people more of a chance to respond on their own, then excerpt some of the artist's statement stuff.

very disturbing, unsettling. slightly repellent. very clever.

Hi Vivien! Guess it's just us.

Yeah, to all of those observations. What I liked, in no particular order...

- Raises questions of where humans end and another species begins, attendant questions of why we feel comfortable denying the "humanity" of other species (even finding a word for what I am getting at points to the issue.)

- The archetypes of motherhood = beautiful, and babyhood = adorable, in the context of rather horrible beasts.

- Related, questions of what is beautiful, what is ugly, and why.

- Mythological aspects -- Romulus and Remus, etc.

- Pure technique -- look at some of the closeups shown in my first link. Amazing detail -- veins, hairs, skin folds, everything.

- The labeling thing I mentioned with the sozlet (I thought that was really interesting).

(By the way she now just LOVES to look at this. She's asked to see the picture of the mama camel and the baby camels several times today.)

I saw the biennale article too, and just about the only thing that pulled my interest was this picture you pulled up, with the humanoid doggie and pups, or perhaps I have it wrong.

Will click back to your links and post back in the morning.

On first glance, anyway, I really liked this one, not least for its .....flaxity.
Flaccidity? Looseness?

edited double post

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I love the strong visceral impression The Young Family evokes, so physical, primitive, heavy with nature. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

I like it. It's hard to stop looking at this family -- I also want to label them and to know where they live and how they got there. The technique is amazing -- I enjoyed the other pieces shown on your links for the same reason. The realism is unbelievable. I love the freakishness of her characters -- "Leather Landscape" has some interesting little creatures that I'd like to label, too!

Thanks for posting this!

The feet, it's the feet....

Looked at the other links and agree with the last one, the bit of a review. Interesting to see all this, work that is attractive in itself by itself, and is also about larger issues.

LOL...yeah...the feet!

add vulnerable to my previous list and sozobe you sum it up brilliantly - you made some really good points.

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Oh my gosh, you all got me wrong; my "visceral" response was to the white-haired lady. I thought she was part of the exhibit.

yes, faces only a mother could love........

This has come up again... there was an ad on Facebook for "Recession Relief" that had a weird creepy little person/animal as the illustration. I did a screen grab and can post it if anyone's interested, but I thought it looked familiar and remembered this sculpture ("The Young Family," though I couldn't remember the name, took a lot of Googling for things like "weird animal sculpture nursing" before I found it). Armed with the artist's name (Patricia Piccinini) I found the sculpture in question -- it was her!

"Surrogate (for the Northern Hairynosed Wombat)"


Check out the back detail:



And more in this exhibition:



Her site, with more images, explanations, etc:

http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/

How did I miss this?

She's amazing.

I was poring over her stuff until I went out yesterday.

The Big Mother is heart-breaking up close.

You saw it up close!

I'd love to get further thoughts from you.

I've only seen photos so far, would love to see something of hers in person.

Well, it was HUGE! Not all that much taller than a real person, but the head and body and arms and hands and feet were enormous! The pain in the eyes was heart-breaking, and the fleshness without disguise or artifice was heart-breaking.

She's kind of based on the true story of a baboon mother whose baby died, and, in her grief, who stole an infant human and kept it for a while. The baby was unharmed.
This Mother is conceived as a kind of genetically engineered wet nurse...her buttocks and back look as though there has been vivisection...

There is something of the "mammy" in her...forced to raise babies not her own, while grieving for her own baby.

The details of the juxtaposition of the human infant in a disposable nappy, suckling from engineered "human" breasts, and the presence of the ordinary bags of baby stuff, against the Mother's nakedness and animal attributes was profound.


She's working in Australia so I hope I get to see more of her work.


There's a treasure trove of detailed photography of her work in one of the links I posted on my thread.

Other sorts of stuff:






Just plain cute!

The cutie has a freaky back, have you seen it?


This is an actual photo I came across that looks to me like it could be one of Piccinini's sculptures (it's a sphynx cat):



Seven more pics of Grandpaw the sphinx here:

http://www.photoshelter.com/c/carlidavidson/gallery/Grandpaw-Sphynx-Cat/G0000_jVf5IeO.Ec/?_bqH=eJzTDa_MTvL0TEwrM0.LKvULd4swC_BziSw0Si23srAyNDCwsnKP93SxdTcAgvissDRTz1R_PddktQCQqJq7Z7y7o4.Pa1AkNkUALm0bbw--&_bqO=7