Pat Brassington – Bio

Considered one of Australia’s foremost contemporary photomedia artists, Pat Brassington has been beguiling audiences for over 30 years. She is influenced by Surrealism and notions of the unconscious, which infuse her imagination along with her material processes. Unexpected juxtapositions are rife in her images, taking form through collage. Drawing from an archive of her own black and white photographs, found imagery and objects, she works to alter and shift what is recognizable, aiming to pitch her images “just off the verge of normality, into those dense patches where the commonplace goes awry," she explains.

Brassington often conflates opposites - human and animal, shock and the banal, attraction and repulsion - perhaps asking us to consider the delicate balance between these constructs. Despite walking this thin line, Brassington’s works remain seductive. With a lightness of touch, gentle humour and a deft use of colour she creates works and worlds where the senses prevail.

In 2016, Brassington was awarded the Redlands Konica Minolta Prize for an established artist for her work Pair Bonding (2016), and in 2013 she won the prestigious William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize with the image Shadow Boxer (2013). Her work has been featured extensively in national and international exhibitions, including the 2012 Adelaide Biennial Parallel Collisions; Á Rebours, a major survey exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2012), which toured nationally; a solo exhibition in Lönnstrom Art Museum, Finland/Helsinki Festival (2008); Cambridge Road at the Institute of Modern Art (2007); the 2004 Biennale of Sydney; and a major retrospective at the Ian Potter Gallery, VIC (2002). Her work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of Western Australia and Artbank.