New exhibition asks, what is truth?

Wangaratta Art Gallery will present a major new exhibition this Autumn featuring 14 artists from across the country whose work explores how we perceive and navigate truth in an era of global uncertainty. The exhibition,Affording Truth, uses the framework of affordances - the qualities of objects or environments that suggest or enable actions and interactions. Perceived, false, or hidden, affordances are everywhere and key to how humans navigate the world.

Wangaratta Art Gallery received funding through national art investment body Creative Australia forAffording Truth, a collaboration with Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in NSW and City of Moreton Bay Galleries in QLD. After opening here in Wangaratta on 28 March, the exhibition will tour to Wagga Wagga in NSW and Redcliffe in QLD later in the year.

Fuelled by the rapid integration of digital networked systems and hardware, social media, algorithms and artificial intelligence, truth has become relative, contested, and ambiguous. Facts once deemed indisputable are now questioned and open to manipulation in social, political, and digital worlds through the creation and widespread distribution of unfiltered content, artifice, fake news, disinformation, and confected realities.

Curated by Wangaratta Art Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt alongside colleagues Dr Lee-Anne Hall, former Director at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and Hannah Williamson, Curator at City of Moreton Bay Galleries, the exhibition presents new and existing work by artists who interrogate this increasingly muddy space including Alison Alder (NSW), Robert Andrew (QLD), Lorraine Connelly-Northey (NSW), Lauren Dunn (VIC), Honor Freeman (SA), Tyza Hart (QLD), Daniel McKewen (QLD), Juanita McLauchlan (NSW), Raquel Ormella (ACT), Baden Pailthorpe (ACT), Ryan Presley (QLD), Alex Seton (NSW), Scotty So (VIC) and Esther Stewart (VIC).

Wangaratta Art Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt says: “We’re thrilled to present this significant and timely exhibition.Affording Truth explores the ways artists use affordances to shape experience, influence behaviour, and question ingrained assumptions—uncovering alternative truths and challenging dominant narratives. These ideas resonate broadly, and it’s especially meaningful that this project is a collaboration between three regional partners, created for regional audiences.”

The official opening of Affording Truth will be celebrated with a special performance by artist,Scotty So, as his alter-ego Scarlett So Hung Son.

Hong Kong-born, Melbourne-based artist Scotty So is an artist working across a range of media including photography, painting, sculpture, site-responsive installation, videos and drag performance. Driven by the thrill of camp, he explores the often-contradictory relationship between humour and sincerity within lived experience. So’s burlesque performance inhabits the trope of the mysterious and desirable ‘Oriental’ spy, an ambiguous figure who may or may not have seduced a former Australian Prime Minister, blurring fantasy, political myth, and conspiracy.

Affording Truth opens at 5pm on 28 March at Wangaratta Art Gallery, Gallery 1, with a performance from Scotty So. Prior to the opening and performance,Affording Truth artists Lauren Dunn, Tyza Hart, Raquel Ormella and Scotty So will be in conversation with exhibition co-curators Dr Lee-Anne Hall and Hannah Williamson from 4pm.

The exhibition will be on display until 21 June 2026.