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Sometimes described as Australia’s leading surrealist photographic artist, Pat Brassington’s art practice does not sit at ease with fashion or style. Yes, she is enthusiastic about the works of some artists in the surrealist movement and there are many other artists she admires as well. Yes, she has read with genuine interest about psychoanalysis alongside a whole raft of theoretical works. Many aspects of that vast body of art knowledge, ideas, theory and practice inform her essential criticality; just as her own life experience is in there in large measure as well.

At the same time her actual art practice, the building of artworks, is more likely to find its genesis in an image, a family snap, a found photograph, an aging ‘wonder book’, a stained piece of wall paper or a shoe with a holey sole. It’s with one or more images, or a physical thing, that play begins. At least in the early stages of these voyages into an unknown, Brassington will be light on the helm. Various scenarios present themselves in the course of the play. Some are pursued and pushed until they are finally accepted or rejected. Critical scrutiny of this extremely fluid test-bed is ever present. Likely, it will be shelved for another day and still other days.

The current exhibition at Greenaway Art Gallery is a small survey from various groupings over the last decade. Images have been adopted by feminists, dissected psychologically, interpreted as surrealist or fetishist but always distinctly individual.

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