Patricia Piccinini is one of Australia's most acclaimed artists who has received worldwide attention for her startling sculptures and digital environments.
Piccinini's work examine the connections between science, nature, art and the environment. She creates an imaginative world peopled with families of charming and slightly unsettling creature; mutants who are half-human and half-beast, baby trucks and humanized scooters who love one another.
Audiences are drawn to Piccinini's work because they appear so real. Her scultptures are familiar yet fantastical, a possible future species from a strange new world.
Piccinini won Australia's National Arts Prize in 2014 following the creation of her spectacular Skywhale which will also be seen in Galway at the Festival. She reperesented Australia at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.