Artereal Gallery is proud to present a consciously and thoughtfully constructed new body of work by Sydney-based artist Patrizia Biondi – born of a unique moment in global history.
Created during a time of unprecedented turmoil, fear and upheaval, Biondi’s work prompts us to pause and reflect on the systems and structures which we knowingly or unknowingly operate within.
Built out of salvaged cardboard, Biondi’s intricate, quasi-architectural paintings, are an alchemical amalgamation of materials discarded as useless. Transmuting them into bold and striking artworks which rethink, reshape and revision our understanding around how we attribute and determine value, Biondi’s artworks are at once poignant and political, raw and poetic.
“Given the current state of global politics, I saw fit to devote this upcoming exhibition to writer George Orwell, whose oeuvre often foreshadowed some of the peculiar types of governance that are increasingly manifesting worldwide at this very moment. Orwell maintained that language can be employed to manipulate the way in which people think, transforming the unpalatable into the desirable.
My work deals with unsustainable consumer practises, and we also consume language. Mass media posits language as an item of consumption, colouring our viewing filters, shaping our perception of reality. Words read, avidly consumed, are the seeds that shape our thinking – they sprout, grow and spread as we share them with others. This ebb and flow of words produces our cultural code, our ethos.
Culture, then, is also our incessant, tireless, indefatigable, unsustainable urge for consumption. As we dash to the shops to devour the retail spectacle, we lapse into a void, oblivious that, to produce all that goodness, we are killing our soils, our seas, our rocks, our earth and, in the process, our future.
Yet, the hand that holds the pen convinces us the economy must grow and keep growing. And so, it goes, we must consume and keep consuming.
According to Orwell, language can make pure wind look solid. Thus, language has it that happiness is a trip to the shopping centre.”
Patrizia Biondi (Artist Statement, 2020)
Having been the recipient of the 2018 Artereal Gallery Mentorship Award (awarded annually to one graduating Honours Student from Sydney College of the Arts) Artereal presented Biondi’s first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery context in August 2019. Biondi was a finalist in the 2019 PICA Hatched Award, at the Perth Institute for Contemporary Art. Since then Biondi has gone on to receive significant attention from international collectors and curators, presenting her first solo exhibition in an international context in September 2019 at Annarumma Gallery in Naples, Italy. Her work has been featured as part of an in-depth profile in Vault Magazine and Art Guide Australia, as well as highlighted in Whitewall Magazine.
“It has been evident for some time that there is an overt conflict between environmental sustainability and the current structure of our financial system.
However, within the short space of three months, a virus achieved what humanity has been recalcitrant to do over the last two hundred years – Covid19 has forced the world to slow down production, consumption and, consequently, environmental damage.
Will global governments recognise this opportunity as a reset button or will things go back to being just the same? Are we going to keep on running and running and running, in our daily lives, like the mouse in the wheel, at the service of the economy?”
Patrizia Biondi, May 2020.
The below exhibition features a selection of recent paintings by Patrizia Biondi. If you would also like to view a catalogue showcasing earlier artworks by Biondi which are also available please click here.
The Essence of Being Human Is That One Does Not Seek Perfection
If Liberty Means Anything at All, It Means the Right to Tell People What They Don’t Want to Hear. Orwell
Political Chaos Is Connected with the Decay of Language. One Can Probably Bring About Some Improvement by Starting at the Verbal End
Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. Orwell
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink - Orwell
We Shall Meet In The Place Where There's No Darkness - Orwell, 1984
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history - Orwell
In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act. Orwell
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