It’s just a heartbeat away Pat Brassington is one of Australia’s leading photographic artists. For three decades Brassington has developed a significant critical and popular reputation for her visually striking, highly ambiguous pictures. As you will see in this exhibition, while some of her photographs are relatively ‘straight’ or unmanipulated pictures, Brassington’s trademark is digitally composited images which invoke the unconscious and the imagination. Brassington’s highly experimental process is informed by her training as a printmaker. She digitally constructs pictures through an additive process that draws on her vast archive of photographic and printed images, some of which are found pictures and others taken by Brassington. Drawing on the photography of the Surrealists and the process of montage used by avant-garde filmmakers, Brassington brings together unrelated fragments. Through this process, Brassington creates images and series of works that seem at once dreamlike and ambiguous, strange and – with their references to domestic life – familiar. Brassington has developed a substantial catalogue. Her earliest work dates from the early 1980s. As then, Brassington’s work continues to mine a series of concerns that include: the psycho-dynamics of family life and familial rituals; the convergence of photography, popular culture (especially cinema) and gender; and collage and montage as formal strategies. While her pictures can circulate as single works, they are always produced in series and are often presented as a group arranged across a wall or as an installation. This means her works are experienced as a form of enigmatic, often ineffable narrative.
MONASH GALLERY OF ART 860 Ferntree Gully Rd Wheelers Hill VIC 3150 T: +61 3 8544 0500 E: mga@monash.vic.gov.au W: www.mga.org.au MGA: THE HOME OF AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY
PAT BRASSINGTON It’s just a heartbeat away
23 NOVEMBER 2012–3 FEBRUARY 2013
COVER:
Twins 2001 from the series Gentle ink-jet print image size 70.0 x 55.5 cm Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 2002 MGA 2002.24
Brassington’s method, aesthetic and particular palette have been highly influential. Her work is held in many important public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, each of Australia’s state galleries and ArtBank. She has been featured extensively in national and international exhibitions, including a ground-breaking retrospective at the Ian Potter Gallery, University of Melbourne in 2002, and more recent surveys at the Lönnstrom Art Museum, Finland in 2008, and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2012.
30 MARCH–3 JUNE 2012
MGA holds a significant number of Brassington’s works, which are shown here alongside the artist’s new major work A heartbeat away.
COVER IMAGE A heartbeat away 2011–12 pigment ink-jet prints installation dimensions variable (approx 3500 x 7000 cm) collection of the artist supported by the Australia Council for the Arts
curated by Djon Mundine OAM Michael Aird, Mervyn Bishop, Adam Hill, Gary Lee, Ricky Maynard, Peter McKenzie, Michael Riley, Jason Wing