‘Holding Tight and Letting Go’ by Patricia Piccinini on Plinth

17 Jun 2026

Plinth features Patricia Piccinini’s ongoing exhibition Holding Tight and Letting Go in an article by Sammi Gale:

Another thing we often ask of art is to produce a sense of beauty. Piccinini is beloved (she was ranked the world’s most popular contemporary artist in 2016, according to The Art Newspaper’s annual attendance rankings) yet these works are decidedly ugly even for a time when ugliness is en vogue – way, way beyond tabis and bleached eyebrows. In fact, they strike me as aesthetically unfashionable as well as grotesque, in the spirit of the 1980s superrealist works of Duane Hanson, or Ian McEwan’s fascination with blending art and science. Yet, these works are assured, even as they chart a path that feels curiously out of step with their times. At the risk of sounding like One Direction – that is what makes them attractive.

[…]

We live amid an endless circulation of cute animals: cats, dogs and rescued wildlife flattened into swipeable content, endlessly reassuring us that nature is still on our side. Piccinini’s work refuses that comfort. It drags those impulses back toward something stranger and less easily consumed – where fear and care are not opposites but adjacent responses. Holding Tight and Letting Go suggests that compassion may begin precisely at the point where instinct tells us to recoil – and that what we call monstrous might simply be the moment before recognition.

Holding Tight and Letting Go by Patricia Piccinini is on view in Ames Yavuz in London until 11 July 2026.

Installation view of Holding Tight and Letting Go at Ames Yavuz London, 2026. Photography by Deniz Guzel.