PAT BRASSINGTON features in DARK MOFO 2026

PAT BRASSINGTON features in the group exhibition All The Fires Come Alive as part of the iconic DARK MOFO 2026 program - free entry at the State Library and Archives of Tasmania.

Uncover arcane knowledge, spirits, and alchemy within the collections of the State Library and Archives of Tasmania, where contemporary artists and esoteric texts reignite what’s unseen.

Artists include Atong Atem, Marion Abraham, Joel Stephen Birnie, Pat Brassington, Lou Conboy, Julie Gough, Emily Parsons-Lord, Edith Perrenot, Michael Schlitz, Hilary Schofield with the Convict Records, Sisters Akousmatica with Jack Mitchell, and Ursula Woods.

Opening with DARK MOFO on 11 June 2026.

PAT BRASSINGTON features 23 new works in CODED BLOOMS at Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh)

The MAPh exhibition, 'CODED BLOOMS', curated by Angela Conner includes 23 new commissioned works by BRASSINGTON, featured alongside works by Robert Mapplethorpe (drawn from the NGA collection), and commissions by Del Kathryn Barton, Jake Preval and Meng-Yu Yan.

In CODED BLOOMS, the artists push the floral beyond polite still life traditions into unruly and intimate terrain. The artists each approach the flower as a site of psychological tension, bodily presence and relational meaning. Here, petals, shadows and surfaces operate as signals, carrying what is hidden, forbidden or quietly radical.

In BRASSINGTON’s images, the bloom hovers within a charged psychological space.

BRASSINGTON looms large in the subconscious of contemporary Australian art. Recognised as the mind behind some of Australia’s most fragile and intense images, Brassington is informed by surrealism, feminism, and psychoanalysis.

The exhibition opens Saturday 7 March and runs until 24 May.

PAT BRASSINGTON & IMANTS TILLERS feature in A Moment in Time - Collecting Contemporary at Geelong Gallery

PAT BRASSINGTON & IMANTS TILLERS feature in the current exhibition A Moment in Time—Collecting Contemporary at Geelong Gallery.

The show celebrates works acquired over the last decade through the fundraising efforts of Geelong Contemporary, one of the Gallery’s key support groups. Since its establishment in 2016, Geelong Contemporary has focussed on acquiring works by Australian artists working across diverse media, whose works reflect the issues of our times.

The exhibition continues until Sunday 15 Feb 2026.

PAT BRASSINGTON features in MECCA store

PAT BRASSINGTON features in the VIP section of the new flagship Bourke Street MECCA store with her work 'Avid' (2004) - a hauntingly beautiful piece that perfectly complements the sophistication and contemporary edge of the MECCA Collection, adding a touch of surreal allure to the space.

ANNE ZAHALKA & PAT BRASSINGTON featured in publication On Display: The story of Artbank

ANNE ZAHALKA & PAT BRASSINGTON are featured in On Display: The story of Artbank - a landmark publication which chronicles the evolution of Artbank as one of Australia’s most visible and visionary art collections and its role in shaping the national cultural landscape since 1980.

Among the iconic works held in the collection are Anne Zahalka’s The Bather and The Surfers (1989), part of her celebrated series Bondi: Playground of the Pacific. With a critical lens on place, identity and representation, Zahalka reimagines Australian culture through staged portraits set against a painted backdrop of Bondi.

Also, featured in the publication is Pat Brassington's 'Lisp', 1997, which displays a child's face emerges from a watery space as if caught in a dream, speaking to her exploration of digital manipulation and the performativity of the photographic medium.

More information here >

Celebrating 45 Years of Artbank

45 YEARS OF ARTBANK
It was a pleasure to celebrate Artbank’s 45th birthday last week - marking nearly half a century of vital support for the arts in Australia.
We’re proud to have worked with Artbank over the years, with many of our represented artists included in their remarkable collection.

Exhibtion, 'ON DISPLAY' is currently showing at Artbank Melbourne until the 10th of October, 2025

IMAGE: Barry Keldoulis (Artbank), Fran Clark (Director ARC ONE Gallery) and Mary Wenholz (CEO Melbourne Art Fair)

MECCA Bourke St VIP Opening

Such a pleasure to attend the VIP opening of MECCA Bourke Street and experience the incredible collection of artworks now on display, including powerful pieces by PAT BRASSINGTON and JULIE RRAP.

Huge congratulations to Founder and Co-CEO Jo Horgan, curator Charlotte Day (Director of Potter Museum of Art and Buxton Contemporary), and the brilliant team including Kelly Semmler, Annabel Brown, and many others, for assembling such a striking celebration of contemporary female artists. A truly inspiring commitment to supporting and showcasing their vital work.

IMAGE: Arc One Director Fran Clark and Charlotte Day in front of Julie Rrap’s ’Sister’ and ‘Conception’ from her seminal 1984 Persona and Shadow series

PAT BRASSINGTON featured in RISING Festival 2025

Pat Brassington has designed one of the nine playable holes in Swingers: The Art of Mini Golf—as part of RISING Festival—a playable art exhibition featuring artist-designed mini golf holes full of unexpected obstacles.

Joining Pat are works by Miranda July, Kaylene Whiskey, Nabilah Nordin, Saeborg, Natasha Tontey, Delaine Le Bas, BKTHERULA, and Soda Jerk. Swingers is open until 31 August—don’t miss your shot at Flinders Street Station.

More information can be found here.

PAT BRASSINGTON Features in the exhibition 'Seeing Things' at Wollongong Art Gallery

PAT BRASSINGTON is featured in the exhibition, Seeing Things, opening today at Wollongong Art Gallery.

Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, this is an exhibition showcasing works from their collection that offer disquieting narratives of everyday life as a waking dream, a vantage point for seeing with eyes closed.

Pat’s pink work, Purr (2005) is included. "It’s not my intention to feminise the image by using pink. It's 'nastier' than that. Pink smothers,” says the artist.

Seeing Things continues until 3 August.
More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON Photo Essay in VAULT Magazine

Vault explores Pat Brassington's gutsy work in this photo essay.

"Mundane activities take on unsettling overtones and domestic environs are rendered strangely ominous as disembodied protagonists engage in sometimes confronting or irrational scenarios."

Grab issue 47 here >

In Conversation on PAT BRASSINGTON with Rex Butler, Chelsea Hopper & Victoria Perin

Join us for a special event celebrating the current exhibition of renowned contemporary artist Pat Brassington. Rex Butler will provide a brief presentation on Brassington’s work, asking, how might we think of her work in relation to Man Ray's Le violon d'Ingres (1924), for example, which was made exactly 100 years ago? Following this, there will be a conversation with writer and curator Chelsea Hopper, moderated by art historian Victoria Perin.

CONVERSATION ON PAT BRASSINGTON
📅 Saturday, 20 July 2024, 3–4.30 PM
📍ARC ONE Gallery, 45 Flinders Ln, NAARM/MELBOURNE

IMAGE: Pat Brassington, Combed, 2020, Pigment print, 75 x 75 cm

PAT BRASSINGTON interviewed by Tiarney Miekus in Art Guide Australia

Skewed body parts; allusions to genitalia, sex and violence; tinges of the fleshiest pink; a girl with a lightbulb for a head. Since the 1980s Pat Brassington’s images have entranced the psyche of contemporary Australian art. The photo-media artist’s staged, crafted scenes evoke something complicated, quietened, even repressed, in human nature, with her works often linked to psychoanalysis, feminism and surrealism.

Pat Brassington talks with Art Guide editor-in-chief Tiarney Miekus about first studying art in her thirties, and her early encounters with feminist texts through a wives’ book club. She also talks about her feelings on living and working in Hobart, the role of psychoanalysis in explaining her work, and what it means to mine the unconscious.

You can read the full interview with Tiarney Miekus here.

IMAGE: Pat Brassington, 'Pearl' (detail), 2016, pigment print, 80 x 68cm, Edition of 8 plus 2 artist's proofs.

PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT on display in 'In the Arms of Unconsciousness: Women, Feminism & the Surreal' at Hazelhurst Arts Centre

In the Arms of Unconsciousness: Women, Feminism & the Surreal features a selection of works including Pat Brassington, Julie Rrap, Honey Long & Prue Stent, among other significant contemporary Australian artists on display at Hazelhurst Arts Centre from 1 July 2023 to 10 September 2023.

Sitting within a renewed global interest in women artists and Surrealism, this ambitious exhibition explores ideas of feminism and the surreal, proposing an intrinsic between the two, particularly in contemporary Australian art practice over the decades.

View fullsize

Installation view of a selection of works by Pat Brassington, In the arms of unconsciousness: Women, feminism and the surreal, Hazelhurst Arts Centre

PAT BRASSINGTON Featured in Art Guide Australia

Pat Brassington, Parachute, (detail) 2005, pigment print, 82 x 62cm, Purchased 2018, 2018.035, Wollongong Art Gallery.

"PAT BRASSINGTON, in 'Parachute', 2005, deploys pink like a narcotic, using it to wash her strange scene in a dreamy and unsettling light." Jane O'Sullivan writing for ART GUIDE.

This is the last week to see Brassington, alongside Jacky Redgate, John Brack, David McDiarmid and more in THINKING THROUGH PINK at the Wollongong Art Gallery, guest curated by Sally Grey.

PAT BRASSINGTON and ANNE ZAHALKA feature in the current exhibition 'The Cost of Living' at The Art Gallery of Western Australia

PAT BRASSINGTON, Untitled #13, from Cambridge Road, 2007, Pigment Print, Edition of 8 + 2 A/P, 45.5 x 32.5 cm.

“What is the price of living in the ways we do? What do we value, and who decides? How do we make livings and meanings that get in the way of flourishing? And who gets to define what flourishing means?

The Cost of Living floats these questions through art works on various themes such as: the lure and limits of aspirational romance, social and emotional dislocation, toxic living environments, police violence, the ravages of war and the impact of social media.”

Robert Cook - AGWA Curator of Western Australian and Australian Art

Exhibition continues until January 29, 2023.

SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2022

Welcome to ARC ONE at SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY

From today will be showing a selection of major artworks from some of Australia's most significant contemporary practitioners, including PAT BRASSINGTON, LYNDELL BROWN / CHARLES GREEN, PETER DAVERINGTON, MURRAY FREDERICKS, JANET LAURENCE, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, DANI MARTI, JULIE RRAP, IMANTS TILLERS, GUAN WEI, CATHERINE WOO, and JOHN YOUNG. We are also proud to be presenting, for the first time, the work of internationally acclaimed artist DESMOND LAZARO.

Our booth is showcasing brand new artworks, alongside some of the most iconic works from ARC ONE Gallery, in celebration of these artists and their significant contribution to contemporary art in this country.

PAT BRASSINGTON recently acquired by ART GALLERY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Pat Brassington, The Long Goodbye, 2017, 90 x 72 cm, Pigment print.

Installation view of PAT BRASSINGTON’s work as viewed by ARC ONE Gallery Director Fran Clark recently at AGSA.

BRASSINGTON’S ‘The Long Goodbye’ now part of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection, has been curated by Director Rhana Devenport, into the extraordinary exhibition 'Robert Wilson: Moving portraits'.

The exhibition presents a series of video portraits of international celebrities, artists, ordinary people and animals, created by the New York artist, designer and director.

Artist feature in 'Installation View: Photography Exhibitions in Australia (1848-2020)'

IMAGE: Anne Zahalka, The Cook (Michael Schmidt/architect) from the series Resemblance, 1986, matt Cibachrome paper, unique larger size, 100 x 100cm.

Six of our artists ANNE ZAHALKA, PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP, JACKY REDGATE, JUSTINE KHAMARA and JOHN YOUNG feature in Daniel Palmer and Martyn Jolly's publication 'Installation View: Photography Exhibitions in Australia (1848-2020)', published by Perimeter Books and designed by Public Office.

"Installation View offers a significant new account of photography in Australia, told through its most important exhibitions and models of collection and display. By looking at what lies beyond the frame the exhibition speaks not only to pictures, but to the people and places that nurture them."
Find more information about the book here

Five of ARC ONE artists are featured in the newly published 'Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia'

Anne Marsh, ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’, published on 2 November, 2021, by The Miegunyah Press.

Five of ARC ONE artists – ANNE ZAHALKA, EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS, PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP and JACKY REDGATE are featured in the newly published ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’.

Providing a comprehensive analysis of women’s art movements in Australia from the 1960s onward, this remarkable book by art historian Anne Marsh chronicles the struggles, contestations and achievements of women and feminism in Australian visual arts history. The book also acts as an divergent investigation into how the “doing” of feminism has shaped contemporary art and culture at home and abroad.

“…art and feminism are cyclical; they spiral in and out of time, and it’s interesting to see these younger women, very schooled in theoretical frameworks, turning back to an earlier time, and asking: why aren’t we doing that anymore?” ——Anne Marsh in conversation with Susanna Ling.

PAT BRASSINGTON WORK SUBJECT OF MUMA QUEER READINGS

PAT BRASSINGTON’s work has been written on as part of Queer Readings of the Monash University Collection. For this project, a group of writers and artists have been invited to contextualise a selection of works of art through the lenses of their experience and knowledge.

Commissioned writer Anne Marsh says of Pat Brassinton’s work:

‘Formally, the work critiques the modernist grid by monumentalising the everyday and punctuating it with fetishist and abject references made-up in the viewer’s mind as they contemplate the soft material abstractions made out of discarded underwear. In this way Brassington gives the work its own potential intelligence. It is as if the viewer needs to have a visual conversation with the image in order to decode it.’

Anne Marsh is a Professional Research Fellow in the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne.

Read the full text here >

Pat Brassington, Rising Damp, 1995, gelatin silver prints, 35 parts, each 59 x 44 cm