From summer 2005 to summer 2006 I was lucky enough to take time out of normal life and drift around New Zealand by bike. Near the end of my trip I stayed with a good friend of mine in Wellington and went to the City Art Gallery to see a quite amazing exhibition of work by Patricia Piccinini.

She is a challenging contemporary artist now living in Australia (originally Sierra Leone) who works in mixed media formats. Her combination of futuristic creatures with human characteristics proved a real winner for me, it must have made quite an impression as I found myself thinking about her work when I had a moment to switch off yesterday. She makes us think about humanity, mutation, evolution and genetic modification. Her work is designed to be deceptively unsettling toying with reality and invention.

If you haven’t heard of her or seen any of her work then take a minute to have a look, not everyone’s cup of tea of course but it certainly couldn’t be described as boring. This is her home site : www.patriciapiccinini.net and the exhibition I saw is archived here : www.citygallery.org.nz/mainsite/patricia-piccinini-in-another-life.html