The Theatre is Lying is one of the inaugural Macfarlane Commissions, the first in a series of exhibitions involving new commissions by leading contemporary artists at mid-career.

Curated by ACCA Artistic Director Max Delany and Senior Curator Annika Kristensen, with new works from artists Anna Breckon & Nat Randall, Sol Calero, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Matthew Griffin and Daniel Jenatsch, The Theatre is Lying delves into the world of conspiracy theories, red herrings, smoke and mirrors, espionage and spy dramas, and the representations and misrepresentations of cinema and media.

Exploring ideas of truth and fiction, perception and abstraction, and the warping of time and space, the exhibition also considers the role of the spectator as an active agent in a world in which we are all actors, along with the increasing interplay between subjective and objective, and psychic and social structures.

Through the white cube of the gallery and the black box of cinema the exhibition proposes the gallery as a transformative threshold in which to examine the potential of imagination and artifice as means to reflect upon, critique and even escape – if only momentarily – the everyday reality of our fictive life and times.