Patricia Piccinini and Allissa Oughtred

- I met Allie because she was part of a crew that did some work with the ABC, and I was just immediately drawn to her, and just as part of the project, she took some photographs of me here, and they were just so beautiful that I just thought, wow she's got real talent. And yeah, she just stood out, and she has beautiful presence. You've taken my photograph quite a few times now, and they're all quite different, and I think that one of the things that makes you a really great photographer is that you are able to connect with people. And I feel a special connection with you. That's why I keep coming back to you, and saying can we do something else? Can we do something else? And saying, oh, I've got this great dress. What can we do with it?

- Yeah.

- So that you said with the dress, what movement do you think this dress should make? And I just thought, oh, it should be very sculptural, it should be bending backwards, and I could just do it. But in real life, I would never do it, never do that, but I could just do it, and not feel strange or ridiculous. And it made a beautiful arc in the photograph.

- Yes, yeah. Well, we had this dress from Romance Was Born so that was what started it. And Patricia suggested the colour and the art direction combination of using the back room with all of the moulds in the back. But I knew that we didn't want her just standing there looking at the camera, or even soul gazing, which we've done some great portraits where we've had that. We wanted to show the movement of the dress, but also some of my favourite portraits of artists are of them really in their studio. And so the first time I came here, and every time I come here, I'm just struck by the the magical world, and the team, and you just sort of wanna believe that Patricia is rocking around the studio, you know, like this, that she is. So to me, she is, she's this magical, incredibly kind, very, the energy that she has within her, it almost, it just glows out of her, you know? And so I wanted to capture all of that. Yeah, portraiture to me is very interesting. What I'm interested in is not the mask that someone would would show, but I honestly, we never know where we gonna go with my portraiture work, it's always an adventure, and it's just up to the bravery of the subject, really to see what comes out, I can hold space, because I'm really excited that they're even up for that. And so to make a picture, and things like that, that's really fun for me.

- That's why that picture, I'm really so in love with, because it's got so many dimensions to it.

- It's a great picture.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I think what I like in my work is what excites me as someone's receptivity. So receptivity could be defined as the willingness to receive whatever's coming in. And so many humans, they have filters for, you know, how much they're gonna let in, how much they're gonna show. And it's very scary for people to open up in vulnerably in front of the camera. My experience is that the best photos of people are when they are in a natural state of vulnerability and receptivity. So then how do we get them to that point in front of the camera?

- I've worked for around 30 years with ideas to do with what we find natural and artificial. And that's been a fantastic area for me to dwell in, because it encompasses so much. And recently it's had a lot to do with the kind of climate emergency and crisis. But fundamentally, my work is really about care. And a lot of it has to do with how we relate to difference. And I hope that when people come to my work, there is a dynamic that happens that it's not just, you know, something that they consume and walk on. There is something that they find, sort of engaging, confronting, challenging, and different, new, and people are drawn to that, but in a kind of way that they're not unsure about. Maybe they're pushed away because of it, and then they might come back in, because they've connected on an emotional level. So emotional connections are really important to me. And these are embodied things. Just think about them. They involve the heart. It's not their brain, it's mind, it's the way you relate to things. A work like this, which echoes a bit the photograph we made, 'cause it's just as kind of improbable. In fact, it's impossible to be able to do this kind of yoga pose. If this work is about the kinds of identities we might need to have to be able to embrace new ideas around how we engage with nature, and what that might look like. And we can see this young person here being able to have the fortitude to be able to hold up this new ecology. But unlike Atlas, who had to hold up the world, it wasn't punitive. They're doing it because they're choosing to do that. They want to create a new way of supporting, and a new understanding of how we can relate to nature, and what is nature for us. And the idea here is that it's a kind of blended concept to nature and technology, and new life.

- That's really interesting. And I'm lucky to have watched Patricia do that inside an art's practise. I think it's incredible work and art that she makes. So I am exploring similar themes, but from the point, the view of snapshotting really, and of observing the reality as it's unfolding rather than sitting in making something from, I'm capturing it live. So that's my practise.

- Great.

- Thanks.