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.

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

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

PAT BRASSINGTON IN THE BALLARAT FOTO BIENNALE

PAT BRASSINGTON is featured in the 2021 Ballarat International Foto Biennale. The biennale’s core outdoor program invigorates the city of Ballarat by transforming busy streets, laneways, shopfronts and landmark buildings into exhibition spaces with public art.

Say it with Flowers is a site-responsive exhibition at Ballarat General Cemetery, curated by Wotjobaluk curator Kat Clarke. Responding to memory, mortality, longing and community, the exhibition is a meditation on the significance of flowers and land within the framework of nostalgia and memory.

Flowers represent a potent symbol of life and death, reminding one of both celebration and decay. While acknowledging the sensitive nature of the site, the exhibition aims to challenge the idea of the cemetery as a dormant space and demystify it as one for reflection and contemplation on the transience and impermanence of life.

BIFB continues until 24 October.

More information >

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Pat Brassington’s Blush (2014) & Quiescent (2014) on display at the Ballarat General Cemetery in the exhibition Say it with Flowers, 2021.

PAT BRASSINGTON & JACKY REDGATE IN BOWNESS ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

PAT BRASSINGTON & JACKY REDGATE are included in the MGA Bowness Photography Prize Anniversary exhibition at Wangaratta Art Gallery, from 21 August – 14 November, 2021.

Curated by MGA Director Anouska Phizacklea, the exhibition celebrates the past winning artists (2006–20) with a selection of works drawn from the MGA Collection and showcases contemporary photography in Australia.

JACKY REDGATE won the Bowness Prize in 2011 with her work Light throw (mirrors) #4, 2011; and PAT BRASSINGTON in 2013 with her work Shadow boxer, 2013.

More information >

Jacky Redgate, Light throw (mirrors) #4, 2011, from the series Light throw (mirrors), 2009–2011, chromogenic print, 126 x 158 cm

Jacky Redgate, Light throw (mirrors) #4, 2011, from the series Light throw (mirrors), 2009–2011, chromogenic print, 126 x 158 cm

Pat Brassington, Shadow boxer, 2013, from the series Quill, pigment ink-jet print, 72 x 50 cm

Pat Brassington, Shadow boxer, 2013, from the series Quill, pigment ink-jet print, 72 x 50 cm

PAT BRASSINGTON IN NEW BUXTON CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITION

PAT BRASSINGTON is featured in Buxton Contemporary’s new exhibition This is a poem, curated by Melissa Keys.

Bringing contemporary art and poetry into dialogue, This is a poem is a multi-disciplinary project encompassing new commissions in a diverse mix of media and forms, live performances, a publication and an exhibition.
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The project draws notable artists and poets into creative discourse. Each participant has been invited to write, perform, read or present in visual form an original work of poetry in response to an artwork held in the University’s Buxton Contemporary collection. In this case, choreographer/interdisciplinary artist Sandra Parker responds to Pat Brassington’s 1998 work, Neck.⁣
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Conceived to creatively animate the collection, This is a poem brings art, artists, and poetry into orbit with audiences through an experimental and experiential exhibition that explored the longstanding tradition of ekphrastic poetry.⁣
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Capacity limits are in place, so pre-book your visit to ensure there's room for you. The exhibition continues until 14 November.
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More information >

Image 1: Pat Brassington, Neck, 1998, pigment print, 72 x 54cm; Image 2: Installation views of Sanda Parker's work alongside Pat Brassington's work, photos by Christian Capurro.

PAT BRASSINGTON LIMITED EDITION OF 'FRED'

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PAT BRASSINGTON has generously donated her work Fred to support the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. You now have the unique opportunity to purchase a limited edition work by the legendary Brassington, at a smaller size than her gallery works.

Fred is a wonderful expression of Brassington’s signature photo-media work. You can purchase this work via the BIFB website, with proceeds contributing to Ballartat Foto’s future and helping to support artists and champion photography as an art form in Australia.

Artwork details: 

Pat Brassington,
Fred, 2014
Hahnemühle Photo Rag, 308gsm, 100% archival cotton rag
15.8cm x 18.3cm
Limited edition of 30

PAT BRASSINGTON AT ARTBANK

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Pat Brassington is featured in The Work of Art, currently showing at artbank.

Curated by Sabrina Baker and Anja Loughhead as part of the Artbank Emerging Curator program, the exhibition brings together a selection of works from the Artbank collection that interrogate our relationship to art and traditional notions of labour.

Join Sabrina and Anja alongside artist Darcey Bella Arnold at 1pm on Saturday 22 May as they discuss the physical, conceptual, material and emotional exertion tied to creative production and the importance of placing value on the - work of art.

More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON'S 'NIGHT SWIMMING' EXHIBITION NOW OPEN

One of Australia’s most significant and influential artists, Pat Brassington, returns to ARC ONE with Night Swimming, a new body of work presented as part of the PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. An opening reception will be held on Friday 19 February, 6-8pm.

Pat Brassington’s work uncovers how the endless possibilities of our deep and complex inner states — narratives of sex, memory and identity — run quietly rampant.

Influenced by surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis, Brassington is known for her ability to combine the ordinary with the unusual, making her work provocatively ambiguous.

Pat Brassington, Footloose, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

Pat Brassington, Footloose, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

In Night Swimming, she employs photomontage to reveal the power of the mind to transform mundane objects and situations into sites/sights of sensuality, desire, horror or menace. Baulking prior to resolution, Brassington leaves her work open to interpretation; allowing the viewers’ visual mind to make its own associations. Digitally manipulated and evocatively juxtaposed, bodily fragments, inky tones, fetish objects and claustrophobic interiors are rendered abject or sublime, unsettling or seductive by the viewer; exposing our innermost predilections, hopes, biases and fears.

Typical of the artist’s work, these monochromatic images bring together a series of fragments which
create a strange and ambiguous world.

Pat Brassington, Precious, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

Pat Brassington, Precious, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

The parts of the images – a fish slipping down a throat, a jarring clash of sharp fingernails, heads which twist into a strange darkness and feet that curl – are drawn from Brassington’s vast archive of visual material and are deeply personal. These disjointed compositions offer contradictions between the soft charcoal tones of the pigment print, the intimacy of the forms and the unsettling charge of the juxtapositions. Night Swimming rouses a sense of disquiet as the images subtly and humorously scratch at the underbelly of the human condition.

PAT BRASSINGTON AT WOLLONGONG ART GALLERY

PAT BRASSINGTON is featured in the exhibition Every Body, now showing at Wollongong Art Gallery.

This is an exhibition of works from the collection that explores narrative, mythological, historical and reflective depictions of the human body. 

Three of Pat’s pink works from the early 2000’s are included. "It’s not my intention to feminise the image by using pink. It's 'nastier' than that. Pink smothers,” says the artist. 

Every Body continues until July next year.

More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA IN NEW GEELONG GALLERY SHOW

PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA are featured in Geelong Gallery’s new exhibition Framing the Figure - contemporary photography and moving image works from the collection.

This exhibition explores artists’ use of the camera to capture their human subjects in both still and moving images. Through performative gestures, constructed narratives or a focus on specific body parts, these lens-based artists work closely with their subjects to compose the figure within the camera’s frame.


Framing the figure opens today and continues until 25 April 2021. Book a free, timed-entry ticket ahead of your visit!

More information >

Pat Brassington, Akimbo, 1999, pigment print, 72 x 52 cm

Pat Brassington, Akimbo, 1999, pigment print, 72 x 52 cm

TEN CUBE RELEASES LANDMARK PUBLICATION

Ten Cubed has released a publication to celebrate their tenth anniversary and the conclusion of their project - 2010 - 2020: TEN CUBED CONCEPT, COLLECTION, GALLERY.

Ten Cubed is an art experiment begun in 2010 whereby an evolving top ten contemporary artists were collected in depth. Their collection includes ARC ONE artists PAT BRASSINGTON & CYRUS TANG. 

This beautifully designed book records various stages of their wonderful journey - from conception, building the gallery, acquiring the collection to exhibiting the works of the many artists they are proud to have supported.⁣

Purchase your copy here!

PAT BRASSINGTON IN 'LEGACY' EXHIBITION

PAT BRASSINGTON is part of the exhibition LEGACY, now open online via Wyndham Art Gallery. This exhibition opens up a dialogue between six artists to consider what we keep, what we share and what we leave behind.

Brassington’s surrealist photo-media works are eerie and inviting, like snippets of dreams hiding in the corners of memory. They act as a counterpoint to Liam Benson’s photo and video pieces that feed on the aesthetic of the Australian gothic.

“Brassington has never stopped making works that startle and astonish, that create chills and uncanny flushes, night sweats and eerie incantations of strange eroticism. In many ways she forms a bedrock to this exhibition. Brassington has never eschewed crediting other giants in her creative evolution, from the early Surrealists to the bleak majesty of literary giant Cormac McCarthy. And there can be no doubt that her legacy has helped carve new spaces for younger Australian artists (especially, but by no means exclusively, female artists) to traverse,” writes Dr Ashley Crawford in the catalogue essay. 

LEGACY is co-curated by Caroline Esbenshade & Dr Megan Evans, and continues until 11 October.

View the exhibition here

Read the catalogue essay here

MAJOR FEATURE ON PAT BRASSINGTON IN ART COLLECTOR MAGAZINE

PAT BRASSINGTON is the cover artist of the latest Art Collector Magazine, which features a massive 12-page spread on her work.

Rex Butler examines Brassington’s groundbreaking practice, exploring her “in-your-face sensuous and psychically charged subject matter” and how “behind it lies an extraordinarily refined and self-challenging organisational principle. As Brassington puts it herself: “I am walking the fine line between something that is beautiful and its antithesis”.

Dr Anne Marsh, author of ‘Pat Brassington: This is not a photograph’, is interviewed for the article and describes Brassington’s work as a “tantalising mix of surreal mystery and psychological menace”, and admires the way the artist “works with an incisive eye on our cultural uncanny. Her work encourages us to look deeper into our psycho-social landscape and investigate the hopes, fears and stereotypes that hide there. It’s a very sophisticated practice that looks seamless.”

In February ARC ONE Gallery will present ‘Night Swimming’ – a new body of work by Pat Brassington for the inaugural PHOTO2021 Festival.

Buy the current issue here >