nature’s little helpers
Patricia Piccinini spawned a new breed of adorably grotesque creatures for her first solo show at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York. The artist produced a logical follow-up to We are Family which was exhibited in the 2003 Venice Biennale. Piccinini again captured our attention with a grand and ambivalent enquiry into advanced biological science. Her life-size and hyper-real mutants were the physical and conceptual heart of Nature’s Little Helpers. The drawing, photography and video displayed were eclipsed by the theatricality and stature of these futuristic sculptures. Overall the exhibition seemed crowded by this diverse collection of works and, perhaps due to the dominance of the figures and the installation, made the artist’s intentions too transparent. The technical mastery, subtle perversity and conceptual accessibility of the recent exhibition lends to wide appeal but fails to offer enough of a challenge to the critical imagination.
Nature’s Little Helpers addressed the potential environmental impacts of biotechnology and acutely demonstrated its social, cultural and psychological effects on humanity. The artist explored the future horizons of reproductive technology and medical innovation by designing creatures that functioned as possible biological aids to endangered Australian wildlife. She endowed her assistants with features derived from rodents and hominids to produce familiar yet disturbing forms. The docile and rotund, Surrogate, sat happily while incubating the fetuses of northern hairy nosed wombats that eerily nestled in pouches on its back. One was caught between the compulsion to cuddle the strange little being or to flee from it in fear. This tension clearly unveiled the artist’s intention to play with our ethical conscience as she asked us to tolerate, and even embrace, the monstrosities that science may create