press release

Tracey Moffatt: narratives is the first major exhibition of this leading contemporary Australian artist to be held in Adelaide. The exhibition explores Moffatt’s interest in the history of cinema and the formal language of film and video in her construction of ‘photo-narratives’. The exhibition features seven of Moffatt’s photographic series: Something More (1989), Scarred for Life I (1994) and II (1999), Up in the Sky (1997), Laudanum (1999), Invocations (2000), and The Adventure Series (2004).

In these series Moffatt uses photographic stills to build non-linear and open-ended stories. These allow her to develop dream-like sequences, in which the real and the imaginary can unfold alongside each other. In this way, Moffatt invests the social reality of issues like race relations and domestic violence with uncertainty and subconscious dimensions.

The exhibition also includes Moffatt's ground breaking films Nice Coloured Girls (1987), Night Cries (1990), Heaven (1997) and BeDevil (1993), and the critically acclaimed video montages produced with Gary Hillberg, Artist (2000), Revolution (2008) and Other (2009).

Presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia and Monash Gallery of Art in association with the BigPond Adelaide Film Festival.

Tracey Moffatt: NARRATIVES