Patricia Piccinini: A Miracle Constantly Repeated

Overview

Sometimes, you just need to lose yourself in the strange and the surreal — especially if you've just spent months and months at home during lockdown. Patricia Piccinini's artworks offer that experience, whether they're floating through the sky or filling cavernous rooms with intriguing creatures. So, the return of her latest exhibition to Melbourne really couldn't come sooner.

From Monday, November 8, A Miracle Constantly Repeated will again take over the usually closed Flinders Street Station Ballroom. The installation was originally announced as part of this year's brand-new Rising Festival, but the Melbourne arts event was impacted by Victoria's late-May lockdown. Then, Piccinini's latest creation had its season extended back at the end of July; however, we all know that another lockdown kicked in not long afterwards.

A Miracle Constantly Repeated will now display until Sunday, June 12, 2022. Expect it to prove popular — when it was able to welcome in punters before July, it attracted close to 20,000 visitors.

It's easy to see why folks were flocking along, given that all of Piccinini's signature touches are evident in its rooms of twisted flowers and eccentric bodies — and, whenever you walk through the former, it really does feel like stepping onto another planet.

A Miracle Constantly Repeated also marks the Melbourne creative's first hometown show in almost two decades, in a venue that hasn't been open to the public in more than 30 years until this exhibition.

Both Flinders Street Station Ballroom and nine other surrounding rooms play host to Piccinini's pieces, with the overall exhibition designed to showcase the site. The artist has crafted the installation to respond to the space as an organic environment, in fact so expect to see her critters placed amongst peeling paint and sat next to left-behind filing cabinets.

Images: Eugene Hyland.