Set above a Chinese noodle spot in Haymarket's Prince Centre, Passage Gallery's round-the-clock space is now exhibiting renowned Australian artist Patricia Piccinini's latest piece, Centrifugal Love Garden. Inspired by a recent visit to a Melbourne stem cell lab, this work offers a kinetic glimpse of a harmonious future, where hybrid forms that aren't quite natural or synthetic symbiotically co-exist. Having long explored science, technology, bio-ethics and an uncertain path forward in her celebrated work, Piccinini has taken a new direction with this piece, adding a propulsive sense of movement. Here, a surreal collection of forms draws from what researchers call 'organoids' — miniaturised, simplified organs suspended in fluid. Artificial yet composed of nature, this duality is what attracted Piccinini to look more closely. To reflect this notion in the installation, Piccinini has created a series of hair works that oscillate from above, referencing not only the colourless organoids, but also the hairy creatures that often appear in Piccinini's work. Meanwhile, a group of stylised birds, based on Antarctic penguins, huddle together to ensure their survival. Another character, Ghost, blurs the boundary between organic and mechanical. On display until Friday, May 8, Centrifugal Love Garden offers a strangely optimistic outlook, where — in the eternal words of Dr Ian Malcolm — life, uh, finds a way. "This work is at home in a world that acknowledges 'naturalised technology'; a world where technology is so seamlessly integrated into everything that it is impossible to see when nature ends, and the artificial begins," says Piccinini. "This is certainly the world of the organoid." Like what you see? Subscribe to the Concrete Playground newsletter to get stories just like these straight to your inbox.
