Lot 89

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney

Unbreaking Eggs, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 3 - 24 September 2005

Each of the works from Patricia Piccinini's 'Unbreaking Eggs' exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, in the artist's own words, was an exploration of the ideas of "creation, birth, responsibility, babies, the changing nature of the environment and our relationship with it, the increasingly nebulous boundaries between the technological and the natural world." Cyclepups: Firestarter is one of these works; an unsettling merger of nature and technology. The work is both shiny and beautiful and while something about its precision signals its unnaturalness, there are enough everyday elements and minor flaws there to strangely draw you into acceptance. The glossy exterior combined with the edgy sensation of abnormality has the remarkable effect of both repelling and compelling you, visually and tactilely. With science constantly and increasingly changing what we accept as normal, this piece expresses the human temptation and tendency to let technology solve and reconceive our reality without fully understanding the potential consequences.