Hyper Real at the National Gallery of Australia: the review is in

Hyperreality is a state of mind, where the real and the simulation of the real are so blended that the conscious mind cannot distinguish where one begins and the other ends and where it is possible to seamlessly combine the real with fiction. The hyperreal gained popularity about half a century ago in painting, photography and sculpture with a widespread appeal with a popular audience and the market place, where people marvelled at its life-like qualities.

The exhibition at the National Gallery is an excursion into the hyperreal in three-dimensional objects and video art dating from 1974 through to the present. There are 32 artists from around the world, including seven Australians, who through about 50 works engage with different aspects of the hyperreal. If one thinks of it as a movement, although possibly best described as an orientation in art, it is one that is largely at the mercy of technological change.

Today 3D modelling and digital sculpting have become commonplace and manual dexterity, so valued only a generation ago, is growing increasingly redundant. As in most good art, it is the conceptual framework that is of higher value than the virtuosity of the execution and, as a matter of fact, many of the hyperreal artists leave the manufacture of their work to technicians.

The Los Angeles artist, Paul McCarthy, best remembered for his extreme performance pieces that invariably involve tomato sauce, vomit and sexual mutilation, in his That Girl (2012-13) hired technicians to take casts to produce perfect replicas of the naked body of the artist's favourite actress in three copies placed on tables with splayed legs and revealed genitalia. Although all sorts of arguments may be advanced on the difference between the naked and the nude, the work invites a rather basic voyeurism that would not be permitted if observing a living model. These pieces are somewhat trite and completely forgettable.

Similarly, John DeAndrea, another male American artist, who uses painted bronze instead of McCarthy's silicone, does not go much beyond restating the beautiful nude female body, which is somewhat objectified and presented to the voyeuristic gaze.

A third male white American artist, Duane Hanson, who spent most of his career in South Florida, casts his hyperreal figures in fiberglass choosing people getting on with their daily chores, aesthetically not achieving more than what is found in a regular waxwork museum. McCarthy, DeAndrea and Hanson play with the hyperreal to create exact replicas of figures from the real world that we may feel more comfortable in observing and staring at, than at live models.

Of the Australian contingent of artists, Stephen Birch, Shaun Gladwell, Sam Jinks, Ron Mueck, Jan Nelson, Patricia Piccinini and Ronnie van Hout (originally from New Zealand), Canberra's Piccinini's is the most interesting.

Piccinini, in part drawing on the experience of the surrealists, employs the language of hyperrealism to move into the realm of the uncanny. Her hybrid mutants derive from elements taken from the human, animal and plant worlds and become creatures that evoke great empathy and possess human emotions. Her art involves us in a host of ethical questions about genetic intervention and the fundamental question of what it means to be human. She does not fabricate the figures herself and leaves this to technicians.

Mueck and Jinks come out of a background of hands on fabrication, whether it be working on television props, advertising or for other artists. Their work is immaculate, some of it deeply moving, but I feel that it is a pity that it is not pushed into a more imaginative and questioning dimension. Perhaps they are too commercially successful in doing what they are doing, and remaking their sculptures in editions, to change course in their art.

One of the most delightful surprises at the exhibition is the collaborative piece of the duo from Beijing, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Possibly best known for their installations with live animals, their Old people's home (2007) installation consists of 13 elderly life-sized human replicas of army generals, religious and political leaders of various nationalities, wearing very formal costumes sitting in motorised wheelchairs that spin around the room and occasionally bump into each other.

While apparently not representing specific individuals, and modelled on various homeless people whom the artists have encountered on their travels, these "old people" become a metaphor for those who fail to communicate and seem to be endlessly waiting for an unspecified arrival. A mischievous humour punctuates this Godot-like atmosphere.

There is a bit of punk humour, pop art and social critique, especially in pieces by Allen Jones, Marc Sijan, Cao Fei, Peter Land, Jan Nelson, George Segal, Ronnie van Hout and Mel Ramos, which alleviates the seriousness of the sea of silicone replicas.

Many of the artists are stuck in the realm of technical virtuosity and electronic wizardry and seem unable to push their art into a more challenging direction. Digital talking heads have become so widespread that they are no longer engaging, unless they have something interesting to say, while a death mask full of human blood has little more than a ghoulish fascination.

A great highlight of the exhibition is a brilliant piece by the well-known Russian collective AES+F titled Inverso mundus (2015). The collective, its name, an acronym of the names of its members, Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky + Vladimir Fridkes, came to prominence at the 2007 Venice Biennale and has been frequently viewed in Australia.

Inverso mundus is set within a specially built 360-degree amphitheatre, where the seven-channel presentation admits the viewer into a hyperreal fantasy world where the existing world order is overthrown. After the madness of consumerism pollutes the whole world, the poor triumph over the rich, women dominate men, animals triumph over their human masters and children reject the authority of their elders. We have scenes of a beggar bestowing alms on a rich man, a man and a woman carrying donkeys on their backs, while a pig is shown gutting a butcher. Hybrid animals and fantastic creatures float through the air accompanied by a complex but superb musical score. Although the length of the performance is 38 minutes, the audience is mesmerised, perplexed and excited. This is a great example where the new technologies of the hyperreal are employed to communicate a powerful and memorable content.

This exhibition, originally assembled by the Institute for Cultural Exchange in Tübingen and exhibited in Spain, Mexico and Denmark, has been reconstituted for its Canberra showing and supplemented with further pieces and a specially commissioned work, San Jink's deeply moving The deposition. It is an exhibition that is guaranteed to draw crowds and contains much that is fascinating, curious, ghoulish and voyeuristic.

At its best moments, it will inspire and confirm our belief in the preciousness of human life and I predict will generate more selfies than all the other exhibitions at the National Gallery put together. It also makes the important point that in the second decade of the 21st century literal, mimetic realism may not be the best vehicle through which to express a profound idea.