Virginia Trioli's ABC TV series Creative Types recently featured Australian artist Patricia Piccinini and Piccinini's latest public commission is as good a reason as any to travel by train.
Profiled in Piper Press's monograph on Patricia Piccinini, Nearly Beloved, author Helen McDonald traces the trajectory of Piccinini's life and art practice, materials, techniques and inspiration for her drawings, sculptures and and use of technology. The book discusses the confrontation of Piccinini's works whereby viewers are initially torn between empathy, revulsion and concern but how Piccinini questions what it means to be human and our relationships to the things we create.
In this Creative Types episode, Trioli also explores Patricia's childhood, key influences and her many hyper real creatures and the empathy with which she is drawn to making the weird seem less so.
The episode also reveals one of Patricia's latest works called Vernal Glade, which is comprised of more than 500 handmade and individually fired and coloured tiles of Japanese clay. The work is now permanently installed on the entrance wall of the Parkville Metro Station in Melbourne and will act as a greeting travellers as they descend into the station, It will open to the public next year following the stations renovation.
‘The work communicates a sense of new life through colour. These are the colours of spring, new leaves, new foliage, the colours of ripening fruit on a tree.’
Books from Piper Press
