Pat Brassington is one of Australia’s most significant and influential contemporary
artists. With a career spanning four decades, Brassington has become well known for her
incisive ability to infuse the familiar with the fantastic. Her practice is informed by an
interest in surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis.
Seemingly innocent, her enigmatic photomontages open up like a flower, gorgeous and
suggestive, then morph into a psychological Rorschach. In her work the endless
possibilities of our complex inner states - narratives of sex, memory and identity - run
quietly rampant.
Her images are at once charming and menacing. They rouse a sense of disquiet as they
subtly and humorously scratch at the underbelly of the human condition. In her unique
way, Brassington is able to present haunting, dream-like images which lead the viewer to
the edges of the imagination.
Brassington’s work can be experienced at The Royale CLICK HERE TO BOOK
In 2016 Brassington won the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize and in 2013 she was the
recipient of the prestigious Monash Gallery of Art Bowness Photography Prize. A major
survey exhibition, Pat Brassington: A Rebours, was held at the Australian Centre for
Contemporary Art, Melbourne in 2012 and toured Australia and New Zealand until 2016.
Brassington’s work has also featured extensively in major exhibitions, including Know My
Name , National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2020); The Body Electric , National Gallery of
Australia, Canberra (2020); Dressing up: clothing and camera , Monash Gallery of Art,
Victoria (2019); Defining Place/Space: Contemporary Photography from Australia ,
Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (2019); In Her Words, Horsham Regional Art
Gallery (2019); The shape of things to come , Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne
(2018); Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes at the National Gallery of
Victoria (2016); NEW13 at the University of Queensland Art Museum (2013); the Adelaide
Biennial: Parallel Collisions (2012); Feminism Never Happened at the Institute of Modern
Art, Brisbane (2010); the Biennale of Sydney (2004); World Without End - Photography and
the 20th Century at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2000) and Fotokunst Aus
Australien , Berlin (2000), curated by Bernice Murphy.
Pat Brassington’s work is held in many public collections including the Art Gallery of New
South Wales; Queensland Art Gallery; National Gallery of Australia; Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria; Art Gallery of Western Australia;
Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart; ArtBank, Sydney; Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne;
Cologne Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany; Heide Museum of Modern Art,
Melbourne; Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; Murdoch University, Perth; Devonport
Art Gallery, Tasmania; University of the Northern Territory, Darwin and La Trobe University
Art Collection, Melbourne.