Tolarno Galleries is pleased to present Eye-blink Smile, an exhibition of new sculptures and works on paper by Patricia Piccinini.

Following on from her large-scale installation, A Miracle Constantly Repeated, staged at Flinders Street Station for Melbourne's 2022 Rising Festival, this exhibition responds to the notion of interspecies communication.

When Piccinini and her family took in a rescue cat during COVID, she learned that the cat's slow blink was his way of smiling and signalling trust.

Known for her daring and inventive use of different media – from the hot air balloons of her two Skywhales to the high heat of glassblowing – Patricia Piccinini attempts to capture 'the intrinsic optimism' of the idea 'that we don't need to be the same in order to share the world together, we just need a small moment of shared understanding: an eye-blink smile.'

At the heart of Eye-blink Smile is a new collection of glass sculptures.

"Hand-blown glass is almost a perfect metaphor for my conceptual interests," says Piccinini.

"These are luminously colourful objects produced by the interplay of terrific heat and human breath, constrained in this case by a constantly changing steel mould. The works capture a moment when these elemental forces are guided by human actions in a way that is more about cooperation than control.

"Like most of my work, they try to reconcile and blend oppositions; their visual lightness contrasting with their physical weight, their simple abstract colourfulness contrasting with the extraordinary skill of their creation. They are bubbles made of molten sand."

Everything connects in Eye-blink Smile — a dazzling exhibition composed of iridescent shapes and colours, reminding us to consider our connection to materials and to remain curious in our experience of the world.

Press release courtesy Tolarno Galleries.