23rd May 2023 – (Hong Kong) Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to announce HOPE, a large-scale summer exhibition featuring the works of renowned Australian artist Patricia Piccinini. The exhibition, which will run from 24th May to 3rd September, will showcase more than 50 fascinatingly detailed and highly imaginative works across different media, including sculptures, paintings, and moving images.
Piccinini is best known for her hyper-realistic sculptures that explore the unexpected consequences of tampering with nature. Her sculptures have human-like features, yet also possess non-human limbs, fins, wings, and scales. The exhibition will offer visitors an engrossing, perplexing, and deeply touching view of a fantastical imaginary world, yet one with which we identify naturally and instinctively.
HOPE is Patricia Piccinini’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong and encompasses all of the gallery spaces of JC Contemporary. Among the largest works in the show is Celestial Fields, a vast immersive installation comprising 4,500 individual flower stems sprouting both upwards from the floor and downwards from the ceiling. The installation poses questions on the nature of progress and draws visitors into its embrace. Piccinini responds to the signature spiral staircase of JC Contemporary with a 20-metre-high installation of multi-coloured wigs spun together and suspended down the void from the ceiling of the top floor.
Piccinini has been featured in many highly successful exhibitions around the world, including a pavilion presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Her work raises questions about scientific progress and mankind’s destructive power over nature. However, a resilient optimism shines through as the scale and expressiveness of her works speak of tenderness, care, and empathy.
Ultimately, much of Patricia Piccinini’s work explores the notion of interdependence. She is fascinated by what she calls “artificial nature”: awe-inspiring and somewhat unsettling mixtures of creatures, where humans may be combined with living beings concocted in the imagination or in the laboratory. These “chimeras” fundamentally ask questions about how technological advances are opening new horizons, given that humanity appears to be on the cusp of being able to design and create new forms of life and new forms of living-mechanical hybrids. For the artist, this prospect triggers both hope and anxiety about the nature of progress. At the same time, the artist imagines how living with such creatures will demand love, care, and empathy, the same love and care that humanity is morally compelled to show to other living creatures we share the planet with.
Visitors to HOPE will not only experience the artist’s spectacular vision but will also be invited to delve more deeply into broader questions about progress, science and technology, as well as the ethics of care. The exhibition reflects a longer cycle where Tai Kwun Contemporary explores the notion of ‘future bodies’ and the question of nature.
Tobias Berger,Curator of HOPE – Patricia Piccinini, expressed his excitement about the exhibition. He stated, “After last year’s wildly popular Behind Your Eyelid summer exhibition, we are honoured to present another spectacularly large-scale exhibition by such a legendary artist at Tai Kwun Contemporary. Piccinini’s works challenge our preconceived notions about biology and force us to confront the limits of genetic experimentation, technology, the arts, and, of course, humanity itself. HOPE will offer an artistic response, or perhaps rather than an answer, the artist poses more questions about the state of science and technology and progress in the world today.”
Tickets to the exhibition is available on Klook. HK$60 for general tickets and HK$50 for concession tickets (Full-time students with ID, people with disabilities, and senior citizens over the age of 60).
Tickets will also be available at the JC Contemporary reception: HK$70 (general) and HK$60 (concession).
Children under the age of 5 can enjoy free admission.
Meanwhile, Tai Kwun will offer limited qualities of buy-one get-one free admission tickets exclusive to TK Fan on a first come, first serve basis.
For more details about the exhibition, various activities, and ticketing information, visit:www.taikwun.hk/
Lead Sponsor: Indosuez Wealth Management
HOPE
Artist: Patricia Piccinini
Curator: Tobias Berger
Date: 24th May to 3rd September 2023
Tuesday – Sunday, 11am to 7pm
Monday, CLOSED
On-site: HK$70 (Adults) | HK$60 (Concession)
Online: HK$60 (Adults) | HK$50 (Concession)