Tracey Moffatt

The most comprehensive survey to be staged in Australia of the work of leading Australian artist, Tracey Moffatt, opens at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Wednesday 17 December, 2003. Presented in association with Sydney Festival 2004, this exhibition incorporates key photographic series and film works from the mid 1980s to the present day. Included amongst the 140 images from 14 major works and seven film and video pieces is Moffatt’s best known photographic series, Something More (1989). Other works include GUAPA (Good Looking) 1995, celebrating female strength and attitude; the cinematic Up in the Sky (1997), telling the story of a young white woman, her Aboriginal child and Aboriginal suitor; and Fourth (2001), capturing moments of anguish, despair, surprise and humiliation on the face of athletes who came fourth at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Film works include the widely acclaimed short film Night Cries – A Rural Tragedy (1989); the 1993 feature beDevil; the experimental video works Lip (2000) and Artist (2000), created in collaboration with film editor Gary Hillberg; as well as Moffatt’s new work Love (2003). Arguably Australia’s most successful contemporary artist, Tracey Moffatt can best be described as a director of photo-narratives, expertly incorporating photography and filmmaking into her work. In her photographs and films, highly choreographed sound, lighting, colour and composition form the structure of a complex and multi-layered narrative. Born in Brisbane in 1960 Moffatt studied film before moving to Sydney, where she produced and exhibited photographs and made short films, documentaries and music videos. She continues to work in both media, saying that: “I love both film and photography. I don’t want to create a division.” Her highly stylised photographs, often referencing art and photographic history, usually appear in series, almost like film-stills, working as an open-ended narrative rather than as a single image. Subject matter in her work addresses issues of Indigenous heritage, as well as exploring race, gender, sexuality, and identity. Moffatt has exhibited widely internationally with major solo exhibitions held at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, the National Centre for Photography in Paris, the Kunsthalle Vienna, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin. Her exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane toured to Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Moffatt has shown in major group exhibitions including the 1997 Venice Biennale, the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Sydney Biennales, the 1997 Sao Paulo Biennial and Aboriginal Art in Modern Worlds at the National Gallery of Australia and the Hermitage in St Petersburg. Her work was featured in the opening hang at the new Tate Modern in London and she was short listed for the prestigious Citibank Photographic Award in London in 2000. Her work is held in the collections of the Tate Gallery; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Photography, Denmark; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; as well as every major institution in Australia. Her short film Night Cries and her feature film Bedevil were both shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Pressetext

Tracey Moffatt