Art at the frontiers of stem cell technology.
Science Gallery Melbourne’s latest exhibition EMERGENCE(Y) has opened, with a major collaboration between stem cell researchers and a leading Australian contemporary artist.
Patricia Piccinini’s work explores the frontiers of science and technology through sculptures, photographs, video and installation. She is marking the 25th anniversary of her iconic work Still Life with Stem Cells (2002) – a hyperrealist silicone sculpture depicting a girl playing with amorphous blob-like creatures – with a year-long residency with Science Gallery Melbourne that has included time immersed in stem cell research laboratories at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
Patricia’s new artwork Células Madre revisits the girl as an adult, now cradling her own baby and living alongside a more complex blob-creature inspired by the last 20 years of advancing stem cell science. “Células Madre” is the Spanish term for stem cell, literally meaning “mother cell”.
This new work was commissioned for the EMERGENCE[Y] exhibition with the support of the Melbourne node of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine, reNEW, based at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
The exhibtion is on display at Science Gallery Melbourne, at the University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus. Science Gallery aims to bring art and science together to engage 15 to 25 year old people with science and technology. reNEW has also supported an interactive video work An Internal Other by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm that asks if organoids are the future of human health.
Pictured left to right: An Internal Other by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm; Still Life with Stem Cells and Células Madre by Patricia Piccinini.
EMERGENCE(Y) runs from 6 June to 5 December. Visit: melbourne.sciencegallery.com/emergence-y.
The Gallery and reNEW are running special events on Saturday 15 August as part of National Science Week:
· In Conversation: Patricia Piccinini and Professor Melissa Little
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