Pat Brassington

Pat Brassington is one of Australia’s most significant and influential artists working in photo-media. With a career spanning four decades, Brassington has become well known for her incisive ability to infuse the familiar with the fantastic.

Working predominantly in photomedia, Pat Brassington is recognised as one of Australia’s most highly respected and pre-eminent artists. Over nearly four decades she has developed a singular practice that draws on ideas from psychoanalysis, feminism and surrealism, consistently producing visually and psychologically intriguing work.

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. 

The artist has said of her works: 

‘I aim to pitch my images just off the verge of normality, into those dense patches where the commonplace goes awry.’ 

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.

Source: Pat Brassington and Arc One Gallery