The Theatre is Lying: The inaugural Macfarlane Commissions

The Theatre is Lying is the inaugural exhibition in the recently established Macfarlane Commissions series, a new multi-year partnership with The Macfarlane Fund designed to support the production and presentation of ambitious new projects by contemporary Australian and international artists. 

Constructed as an exhibition in five acts, curators Max Delany and Annika Kristensen have brought together artists who create alternative narratives and worlds through illusionary, cinematic and theatrical devices, including installation, misé en scene, historical re-enactment, digital montage and compositions with video, light and sound.

The Theatre is Lying encompasses major new works by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, Sol Calero, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Matthew Griffin and Daniel Jenatsch that explore the manipulation of information and images, notions of artifice and illusion, ideals of transparency and reflection, and an engagement with the representations and misrepresentations of cinema and media.

The catalogue features a partner’s preface by founder of The Macfarlane Fund, Melissa Macfarlane, a foreword by ACCA’s Artistic Director and CEO Max Delany, a curatorial essay by Annika Kristensen alongside full colour documentation of the works in the exhibition, and five feature texts addressing each artist’s practice by Sean Anderson, Samuel Forsythe, Matthew Griffin, Sira Pizà Airas and Anne Rutherford, which are accompanied by artists’ working and reference and material for these new commissions.