Pharma’s Market is a mosaic installation by internationally renowned mosaic artist Cleo Mussi. A culmination of two years research exploring the contrasting imagery of historical and contemporary farming, this exhibition connects traditional ideas about food, agriculture and animal husbandry with modern developments in stem cell research and genetic modification. Although the setting of the exhibition is a traditional agricultural fair, visitors will experience an exhibition with a distinctly contemporary twist.
Cleo has an engaging story to tell, and her characters, from life-sized ‘robo-rabbits’ to ‘space scientists’ and ‘bucolic’ farmers, all jostle for their part in the plot. Her stories are derived from the real world of science and medicine, albeit reconstructed through the process of her own particular visual imagination. Using recycled china to make her extraordinary figures, her surreal sense of humour is where she has made her mark. It’s as if the pieces of china become fragments of DNA in her own genetic rearrangements of nature.
