Exhibitions

Is it real or fake? It’s a question we ask all the time – when we scroll through social media, read the news or even chat with friends. Misinformation is everywhere.

But what fuels it? Why do we keep falling for it? And how do our own biases shape what we accept as true?

Make Believe: Encounters with Misinformation takes you on a journey and unpacks how misinformation has shaped life and culture.

Visitors will encounter four major themes – our planet, our bodies, our histories and our freedoms – through powerful case studies:

• Wiradjuri and Ngiyampaa artist Charlotte Allingham responds to the myth of terra nullius through the lens of 1960s advertising, restoring Blak presence and exposing environmental spin. 

• Scotty So interrogates the reliability of photography and archives in a deepfake era, using beauty, queerness and humour to question what we trust. 

• Professor Helen O’Connell, Anita Brown-Major and Dr Jennifer Hayes expose how centuries of misinformation about female anatomy still shape medical knowledge today. 

• Dr Sofi Basseghi draws on her Iranian heritage to show how women’s voices and stories survive through art and poetry – acts of resistance and preservation in the face of suppression. 

From misleading medical drawings that influenced generations of doctors to the power of advertising in obscuring the environmental impact of our choices, this exhibition highlights the scale of the problem and invites us to examine our own role and how we can effect change.

Image credit: Sofi Basseghi