Freaky Critters

Today, in my baby-free hour, I went out to a couple of exhibitions at the local city gallery. The first was a Michael Smither retrospective. The way Smither makes landscapes look alive, yet his people look like shiny plastic figurines, is great - but I was really there to see the works of Patricia Piccinini.

Piccinini's made a name for herself creating strange creatures which are supposed to be the result of genetic engineering, like this, this and this Go on, click - it's pretty weird stuff - the last one was especially disturbing; it's a depiction of a family of creatures that look like an unfortunate cross between pigs and humans.

Supposedly these creatures have been bio-engineered to help out humankind one way or another; there were exquisite drawings of such creatures playing with babies and toddlers (but of course they can't have been drawn from life, young children simply don't keep still that long!).

I always use the fact that I'm a mother of a six-month old as an excuse for my lack of creative output, but Piccinini has a nine-month old and it hasn't stopped her from thinking up some mind-boggling life forms.