Litter

Piccinini's hyper-real sculptures are also hyper-unreal in that they imagine a world in which developments in genetic engineering and digital media coalesce with the human to present a possible future for us all. Piccinini's deployment of realism in her work makes her invented scenarios seem so probable that we wait for her people and creatures to breathe and move. Viewers are drawn in to see if they are alive, unsure if this is a world that we have created for ourselves or an illusory representation in an art gallery. The science fiction of these sculptures seems to be ready to become science fact any moment now.

Litter shows three young creatures – part human, part animal – huddled with their eyes closed upon a bed of fur. They are at once cute and vulnerable, as well as repelling and strange. Appearing exposed and without a mother, Piccinini compels viewers to empathise with these uncanny, unknowable creatures.