please open hurry by Amalia Pica
Exhibition Dates | 4 August – 7 October
Gallery open 10-5, Tuesday to Sunday
Opening Night Party | Friday 3 August | 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Internationally acclaimed, Argentinian-born and London based Amalia Pica presents her first solo exhibition in Australia with new and recent works exploring the techniques, potential and shortcomings of communication between different species. please open hurry reveals the artist’s longstanding interest in language, comprehension, misunderstanding, translation and listening through sculpture, photography, installation, performance and video.
In 2014, these interests led Pica to undertake a Gashaka Primate Project artistic residency in Nigeria, where she observed the lives and single tool use of chimpanzees. Since that initial research, Pica deepened her understanding of communication with and between the Great Apes through a residency at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado, where she connected with leading specialists.
Pica’s research has resulted in a number of works: three video works created with filmmaker Rafael Ortega in 2017 and 2018, a choreographed dance work with Brisbane-based dancer Michael Smith, three groups of cast objects and a large-scale sculpture featuring 254 handmade collages.
The work that lends its title to the exhibition, please, open, hurry (in memory of Washoe) is a reference to ground-breaking communication research with apes raised in human households in which American Sign Language was used by primatologists. A famous subject was the Chimpanzee Washoe, who used this simple sentence structure to request to go outside her enclosure.
please open hurry is curated at PICA by Senior Curator Eugenio Viola and has been developed in partnership with The Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and The Power Plant, Toronto, with the support of the Keir Foundation.
On Wednesday 1 August Pica will give a free illustrated lecture in the PICA Performance Space. A re-enactment of Catalogue of great ape gestures (in alphabetical order) will be performed in the Westend Gallery on Saturday 4 August following a conversation between Eugenio Viola and artist Khaled Sabsabi.
Artist Biography
Amalia Pica (born in 1978, Neuquén, Argentina) lives and works in London. She has held solo exhibitions at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; NC Arte, Bogotá (both in 2017); Kunstverein Freiburg (2016); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2014); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, (2013); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2013); Chisenhale Gallery (2011), among others. She has also participated in group exhibitions around the world, including Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), The Netherlands (2016); Mass MoCA, Massachusetts, USA (2016); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014). Her work was featured in the Gwangju Biennale (2016) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
Dates and Times
Exhibition Dates | 4 August – 7 October
Gallery open 10-5, Tuesday to Sunday
Opening Night Party | Friday 3 August | 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Media Enquiries
For all media enquiries please contact Tracy Routledge, Publicist via:
e: tracy@trpr.com.au ph: 0412 223 221
High resolution images available here.
ABOUT PICA
The Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) is one of Australia’s leading centres for the development and presentation of contemporary art.
Housed in a striking heritage building in the heart of Perth, Western Australia, PICA is the city’s focal point for those wishing to experience the best of Australian and international visual, performance and interdisciplinary art.
PICA is both a producing and presenting institution that runs a year-round program of exhibitions, seasons in contemporary dance, theatre and performance and a range of interdisciplinary projects.