Micheline Robinson
Bio Merge (Mothers) $5,800 Status: Available
Roots of awareness (Mothers) $5,800 Status: Available
It was a heavy load to carry (Mothers) $5,800 Status: Available
La penseuse (Morphs) $6,800 framed Status: Available -
Reaching for touch and connection (Morphs) $2,600 Status: Available
Into the future (Morphs) $2,600 Status: Available
The face that remained while everything around us shifts (Specimens) $1,800 Status: Available
What has become of you Gingerbread man? (Specimens) $1,800 Status: Available
THRESHOLD BEINGS
An Organoid Intelligence Trilogy
Micheline Robinson
enquiries:ron@exhibitionsgallery.co.nz
Threshold Beings
An Organoid Intelligence Trilogy by Micheline Robinson
Threshold Beings is an exhibition dedicated to organoid intelligence (OI), the emerging field of biological computing that uses lab-grown brain organoids. Structured as a trilogy, it examines embodiment, sentience and the status of physical touch in an era of AI systems, robotics and human-machine hybrids.
At its core, the exhibition asks: as organoid intelligence and AI systems advance, and as robots begin to replace humans in care homes and, even more recently, in classrooms, will we still remember the importance of touch? The warmth of skin? The depth of embodied experience?
If consciousness is rooted in our biological being and DNA, what existential questions confront hybrids that merge silicon with living neural tissue? These hand-painted works on metal, created without external references, present Micheline Robinson’s vision of a hybrid world in touch with its consciousness.
The exhibition unfolds as a story, a narrative across three interconnected bodies of work.
Mothers
Drawing from the artist’s experience as a mother, these metallic forms fuse industrial materiality with a visceral sense of sentience. They function as protective architectures, wombs, holding onto the persistence of physical presence against systems that increasingly replace physical contact with mediated or simulated forms of contact.
Morphs
Translucent, layered biomorphic sculptures in reds, purples and pinks. Visceral and unstable, they present flesh as disjointed parts trying to realign into something recognisable.
Are they foetuses? Are they morphing?
Specimens
Works sealed within clear casings, like laboratory specimens, appear disturbingly alive. Contained yet active, these forms suggest a new kind of material intelligence. They seem to question, to yearn.
The exhibition stages the unresolved questions that surround our increasingly technological relationship to the body, as AI and robotic systems mediate ever more of human contact.
What becomes of our humanity?