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How Far Is Too Far

Baylee Hardwick
Write About Art 4
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The scientific and art worlds have become inextricably bound. It seems that the once bold and fence-like line separating science from art has softened with age and begun to blur, no longer keeping the logical and the intuitive separate. Modern day contentious and scientific issues such as genetic engineering are becoming cause for comment by political and conceptual artists alike. This rise of modern science and technology has influenced the art world, with artistic works now involved with medical, technological and scientific ideologies. Patricia Piccinini’s scientific and ethical approach to her sculptural and video work employs a personal aesthetic to draw empathy and raw emotion from the viewer. This dissolved boundary between science and art has given Piccinini the freedom to reach far beyond the realm of what society expects art to be. Piccinini’s work confronts the viewer and blatantly asks the question: how far is too far?
Where do we draw the line? This question forms part of the contemporary ethical debate in regards to the development of technology and more specifically genetic engineering. Piccinini herself explains:
There are several questions that I always ask myself, and that are at the base of my work: What is the definition of ‘natural’ and the definition of ‘artificial,’ and how do those definitions change over time? We can now treat nature in general as one would treat wood. We can make things out of it. However, we have always done that; we’ve always changed nature. We can make disease-resistant plants, for example. What has changed today is the scale and specificity of what we do, and the cross-species transformations that we can create.1
Definitions of ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ are evident within... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2002. Silicone, fibreglass, leather, human hair, plywood, 85cm high x 150cm long x 120cm wide approx. Courtesy of the artist, and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Haunch of Venison, London.

Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2002. Silicone, fibreglass, leather, human hair, plywood, 85cm high x 150cm long x 120cm wide approx. Courtesy of the artist, and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Haunch of
Venison, London.