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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Michèle Asprey Collection of Australian Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  10 Nov 2013 ~ 4pm
• Lot #:
  7
• Lot Description:
  Patricia Piccinini
  (Born 1965)
  Blue Portrait, from the series Protein Lattice (1997)
  type C photograph; edition 4/6
  80cm high x 80cm wide
  signed, dated and numbered to margin
• Provenance:
  Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
• Exhibited:
  Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 1997
• Notes:
  Artist Statement for the Series Protein Lattice, 1997 For a moment in late 1995 an image appeared in the world media that has stayed in my mind and in the minds of a huge number of other people who saw it. Perhaps it does not float on the surface, but if questioned most of the people I know would be able to recall the mouse with the human ear on its back. [É] The ear was constructed as follows: The cartilage cells were taken from the boy, the skin and blood supplied by the rat. At this point I might ask a simple question in regards to the organic matter that was transplanted from rat to boy: To what species did it belong? And further, was the rat still a rat, or the boy still a human? Where does the contribution of one species end and the other's begin. Perhaps this rhetoric is getting a little grandiose... In reality, the rat was merely a container, an empty organic vessel, a fleshly constituted mechanical process in a technological activity. [É] It is also ironic that, when I went to research Protein Lattice, despite a long and careful search of the resources available via the Internet, I was not able to find a single image of the rat with a human ear on its back. I found plenty of information on the scientific and economic potential of tissue engineering but no pictures of the tragic little rat and its disproportionate burden. My only physical record of the rat with a human ear on its back is a tiny clipping from Time magazine and a tomato sauce stained article in an old copy of Arena that I found at my local cafe. The fact is that if you want to sell a technology like tissue engineering you need to focus on the something a little more 'up' than mutant rodents.Ò Patricia Piccinini 1997
• Estimate:
  A$7,000 - 10,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.