Australian artist Patricia Piccinini’s hybrid The Sage is a cross between the Norfolk Island boobook owl, a species that now only exists as a genetic hybrid, and a complex consumer object. Piccinini comments, “I am returning to a very personal hybridity that I have explored for many years, merging organic creatures and bodies with entirely artificial objects…we find birds – representing freedom, optimism, resilience – intermingling with another long-held fascination of mine: shoes.” In the 1980s only a single female Norfolk Island boobook owl remained, its decline in large part due to deforestation. Two New Zealand morepork were introduced as mates, and now a small hybrid population exists on the island. Here, Piccinini’s brightly coloured Sage is hyperreal, with synthetic textures and folds. It looks upwards with a sense of wonder, or bewilderment. Piccinini’s practice explores ideas of bio-technical intervention. Questions of scientific progress and ethics are intertwined, as are ideas of care and connection. With a distinct material sensibility, Piccinini questions our understanding of set relationships in the world.