Pat Brassington

Faceoff

Pat Brassington is one of Australia’s most prolific and successful photo-media artists. Through five decades of practice, she has cultivated a distinctive visual language that blends the familiar and every day with the abject and strange. Her work is informed by an interest in surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis.

Brassington’s charming and foreboding photomontages often depict and distort faces, eyes and mouths sites of expression and emotion. In Faceoff, the head functions as both a focal point and a void. By playing with presence and absence, Brassington hints at the fragility of identity and the blurriness of boundaries between self, performance and imagination.

Faceoff references old fairground and parlour games. It is also inspired by the work of Mike Parr, another influential contemporary artist, who sat for three days with his head emerging from a large-scale ramp in a performance work titled The Tilted Stage.

Installation view of ‘Faceoff‘, Pat Brassington (2025). Commissioned by RISING Melbourne. PHOTO: Eugene Hyland.