Stills Gallery are delighted to be exhibiting Brassington’s series The Pressings (2011), which invokes the gentle art of pressing flowers while confounding its polite sensibility.
This delicate floral craft, originating in 16th Century Japan before making its way into the pastimes of Victorian ladies, seems immediately at odds with Brassington’s celebrated aesthetic, which continues to challenge us with the uncanny, the abject, and the unconscious. Certainly there is nothing lady-like about The Pressings.
Rather it is the absurdity of picking and thereby killing a living thing in order to preserve its memory and beauty that makes this visual analogy perfect for questioning the nature of the photographic process and dismantling social constructs of sexuality.
Pat Brassington’s work is held in numerous public collections including AGNSW, QAG, NGA, TMAG, NGV and ArtBank. She has been featured extensively in national and international exhibitions, including an upcoming survey at the ACCA in 2012, a large solo show in Lönnstrom Art Museum, Finland and the Helsinki Festival, in 2008, her Cambridge Road series at the IMA in 2007, the Biennale of Sydney 2004 and a major retrospective at the Ian Potter Gallery, University of Melbourne 2002.
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