Patricia Piccinini

(born 1965)

Team WAF (Precautions), 2003 32 x 28 x 32cm (12 5/8 x 11 x 12 5/8in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney in July 2003

EXHIBITED:
Patricia Piccinini: We are Family, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 15 June - 2 November 2003
Patricia Piccinini: We are Family, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, 17 April - 27 June 2004
Patricia Piccinini: We are Family, Hara Museum Tokyo, Japan 6 December 2003 - 1 February 2004
Patricia Piccinini: Hold Me Close to Your Heart, ARTER, Istanbul, Turkey, 22 June - 21 August 2011


What strangely evolved creatures wear these adornments? Speed, clearly, is like oxygen to them. Movement, presumably, on sleek and murderous machines that test the boundaries of the body is a clear requirement. But Patricia Piccinini has always done that; seeking out the borderline between human and alien, works that question the very nature of our biology. While science intrigues her – from genetic manipulation to cloning – it is in fact what it does and can do to the human. Team WAF (Precautions) was a part of Piccinini's exhibition, We Are Family, which delighted, confused, chilled and inspired audiences when she represented Australia at the 2003 Venice Biennale. That same year the show travelled to the Hara Museum in Tokyo. In a talk she gave to theTokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
that year she described the work: "The first thing that you saw as you entered the exhibition was this row of helmets for the work Team WAF (Precautions). And this is the first family that you find in the show, a family of helmets for inhabitants with very strange heads. They indicate that the inhabitants of the house need these beautiful helmets - not because they are different, but because they ride motorcycles very fast. With these helmets, you get a very familiar feeling, because helmets are familiar to us, but a strangeness as well."1

Ashley Crawford

1 Patricia Piccinini, artists talk, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Tokyo, 2003