Tracey Moffatt
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Tracey Moffatt (1960- ), Australian artist using primarily photography and video.
Born Brisbane, 1960. Holds a degree in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art, graduating in 1992.
Her work is held in various international private and public collections including Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Tate Modern (London), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Museet for Santidskunst (Oslo), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Tokyo), National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, BP Australia, Steve Vizard Foundation, NRMA Collection, Parliament House Collection Canberra.
[edit] Photography
Tracey Moffatt first came to prominence in the Australian art world with her series Something More. First exhibited at the Australian Centre for Photography in 1989, the series set the tone and themes of much of her latter work. In a sequence of nine images, Something More is a loose narrative in which the artist puns on the possible meanings of the title and its veiled references to sadomasochism.
In the first image of the series Something More #1 Moffatt appears in the centre of frame in an Asian dress set against a hut in which a woman in a white dress leans against the door. Two children look on and a man in a coolie hat is seen in the background. The backdrop is painted and the image has the look of a film set. Moffatt's image seeks to confuse and disturb meanings of cultural identification while questioning the autheticity of the presentation by reinforcing its own 'fake' construction. The subsequent images in the series present variations on these ideas.
Moffatt's photographic series of works such as Pet Thang[1991] and Laudanum [1998] returned to the themes of Something More exploring mixed and sometimes obscure references to issues of sexuality, history, representation and race. Other series of images, notably Scarred for Life [1994]and Scarred for Life II [1999] again tackled these themes but which took the form of book or magazine illustrations with captions offering ironic and humorous commentaries on the images.
As her work progressed over the next decade, Moffatt began to explore narratives in more gothic settings. In Up in the Sky [1998] the artist's work again used a sequential narrative but instead of using fantasy settings, a story concerning Australia's "stolen generation" - Indigenous Australian children who were taken from their families and forcibly relocated under Government policy - was enacted and perfromed on location in Queensland's outback. In Invocations [2000] Moffatt used a non-specific locale for an opaque psychodrama which recalled Southern American fiction and fantasy films of the early 20th Century.
Moffatt's work since 2000 has retreated from specific locales and subject matter and become more explictly concerned with fame and celebrity. Her series Fourth [2001] used images of sportspeople from the 2000 Summer Olympic Games coming fourth in their various competitions. Seeking to underline their outsider status, the images are treated so only the ignoble fourth place holder is highlighted.
Adventure Series [2004] is Moffatt's most unabashed fantasy series using painted backdrops, costumes and models [including the artist herself] to enact a soap opera like drama of doctors, nurses and pilots in a tropical setting. Under The Sign of Scorpio [2005] is a series 40 images in which the artist takes on the persona of famous women born - like the artist - under the zodiac sign of Scorpio. The series reiterates the artist's ongoing interests in celebrity, alternate personas and constructed realities.
[edit] Films & Video Work
Moffatt's work in film and video has included short films, experimental video and a feature film. The short films rely on the stylistic genre features of experimental cinema - usually including non realist narrative scenarios often shot on sound stages echoing her work in still photography. Early works such as Nice Coloured Girls and Night Cries also use sound mixes that reinforce the 'fakeness' of the settings and use well-worn experimental cinema devices such as audio field recordings and low tones to provide atmosphere. Her short video works such as Artist use the cut up methodology of taking images from pre-existing sources and re-editing them into ironic commentaries on the material - Artist for example providing a commentary on the cliched role of the artist in Hollywood cinema. Her feature film Bedevil is a trio of narratives themed around spirits and hauntings.
Artist [2000]
Tracey Moffatt's Artist is a collection of clips from movies and television programs which show how contemporary society has depicted artists. By showing the particular bias of television and cinema to what the role of an artist means to modern society, the film reflects the sometimes uninformed, sometimes humorous view of society towards artists today. She shows a clip from The Agony and The Ecstacy with Michelangelo destroying his first painting in the Sistine Chapel, a comic scene from the movie Batman with Rembrandts and Degas paintings being vandalised by the 'Joker' and a scene from the television show Absolutely Fabulous, as well as other scenes from art movies such as Surviving Picasso.
Lip [1999]
In Lip, Moffatt shows clips put together of black servants in Hollywood movies talking back to their 'bosses', in what she is trying to show is the discrimination which is often evident in films towards minorities. While watching the films the racism in the movie may be subtle, but when she appropriates many images from different films and puts them together it is much more apparent.
Heaven [1997]
In Moffatt's film, Heaven, she shows footage of men getting changed in a car park near a beach, and she takes the position with the camera of someone watching who possibly is not supposed to, or whom the people in the film are uncomfortable with having there. She is someone watching the surfers who is not supposed to. This film makes art out of a seemingly ordinary activity, includes shots of a car as seen from the inside and outside, as well as surfers wearing ordinary clothes and jewellery. She appropriates these symbols of modern life such as the cars and modern clothing and uses them in an artistic way to express the voyeur theme which she is trying to get across.
Bedevil [1993]
Shown at Cannes Film Festival in 1993.
In her film, Bedevil, which is composed of three contained narratives, Moffatt appropriates images from modern life such as the American soldier in the first story Mister Chuck, the railway tracks in the second Choo Choo Choo Choo and the landlord and eviction in the third Lovin' the Spin I'm in. The images from these films have been partly inspired by memories from her early life.
Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy [1989]
Selected for official competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990.
She uses music in her films such as with cuts showing Jimmy Little singing in the film Night Cries. This film shows a woman caring for her dying mother, as well as showing many years before the woman as a young child at the beach with her mother who is much younger then. Moffatt has used the film to create an effect similar to that of Frederick McCubbin's The Pioneer, which gives the viewer a feeling of sadness as they think about all the events which the person went through in their lifetime. The way the woman would feel bound to care for her mother in the same way that her mother cared for her when she was a child.
