Recently I was lucky enough to visit an extraordinary medical research lab in Melbourne, where scientists are working intensely to bring the promises of stem cell research to the people who gravely need it. It was an inspiring and altruistic space, where people are doing serious work for the right reasons and it gave me space for hope.

 

One of the things I saw there were swirling vessels that contain multitudes of what the researchers called ‘organoids’.  To my eye these were tiny little white blobs spiralling endlessly in the nourishing medium that sustained them. Organoids are miniaturised and simplified versions of organs produced in vitro in three dimensions that mimic the key functional, structural, and biological complexity of that organ. Organoid is a somewhat imprecise term to describe something that is in itself intrinsically nebulous. An organoid sits somewhere between a collection of cells and an actual organ, incredibly contrived yet far from the impossible complexity of a true organ. Sometimes they are somewhat self organising, the cells pulling themselves into the structures we find in our bodies, in other cases they are carefully built by 3d printers or even by hand. It is something that can only really exist in a lab, absolutely artificial but composed entirely of the stuff of nature.

 

These organoids tend to be colourless as they gyrate in their laboratory medium, and seem far from the bloody forms that we find within our body. Watching these extraordinary, living constructions swirl, accumulate and grow I was struck by the realisation that organoids are a great metaphor for much of my own work. I am interested in creating figures that sit in between categories, that are neither one thing nor the other but also somehow both, and that point to the nebulousness of the boundaries themselves.

 

I was also struck by the swirling. This beautiful, gentle yet energetic motion, that is never ending but constrained. My sculptures tend to be characterised by stillness, or by a sense that they might be just about to move. However, there are moments when their hair is caught by a draught from the air-conditioning and they seem to come to life in a way that I find pleasing.

 

Recently I have been working to bring together these elements - hair, motion, forms - into works that express this restless optimism. Hair itself is one of these nebulous materials, both living and inert, yet capable of reanimation through motion. The kinetic works in this exhibition explore these vectors, referencing both the colourless organoids and the hairy creatures of my practice.

 

However, the forms that support the floating hair in these works are not abstract. They are in fact two embracing, birdlike forms. These intertwined figures symbolise a deep connection that I celebrate in my work. While we live in a world where such care is more optimistic than inevitable, I feel that representing the reality of care is more important than ever.

 

Huddled together at the back of the space is another group of stylised birds. These ones are based on Antarctic penguins, whose survival is predicated on their willingness to huddle together in groups for warmth. As the penguins on the periphery, where it is coldest, start to freeze, others from the warmer interior take their place. There is constant movement from the inside to the outside and back again that allows the group to share their limited stores of warmth. Periods of individual discomfort enables the survival of the group in a place where selfishness means death. The metaphorical weight of this story is obvious, I think.

 

Sharing the space with these birds are two, more obscure beings. Ghost is one of my first explorations of what I now understand to be organoids. It is a funny, suspended figure that is a representation of pure corporeality. Ghost rejects the symmetrical functionality of regular mammals, yet shares their hair and fleshy orifices. With their strange tyre-like hat and dangling mane, Ghost is both abject and intriguing, wondering at the boundaries of the organic and the mechanical. In this installation, Ghost shares a languid motion with the other suspended works.

 

Shoeform (Angiosperm) is another work that explores the dissolution of boundaries between plant, animal and mechanical. It is a glossy celebration of organic fecundity that is transformed as we realise that the petals of its fleshy flower are actually shoes. This work is at home in a world that acknowledges “naturalized technology”; a world where technology is so seamlessly integrated into everything that it is impossible to see when nature ends and the artificial begins. This is certainly the world of the organoid.

 

In this way, Centrifugal Love Garden draws together several strands of my practice that reimagine the natural in the context of the contemporary world. It has an energy that is positive and optimistic, underscored by the belief that despite the many challenges that the present poses, there is a path of care and connection that winds through.

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- Patricia Piccinini