Tracey Moffatt
| Tracey Moffatt | |
|---|---|
| Born |
12 November 1960 Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Education | Queensland College of Art |
| Known for | Photography, Film |
| Notable work | Something more (1989) |
Tracey Moffatt AO (born 12 November 1960) is an Australian artist who primarily uses photography and video.
Born in Brisbane in 1960, she holds a degree in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art, graduating in 1982.
Though she is best known for her photographic works, Moffatt has created numerous films, documentaries and videos. Her work often focuses on Australian Aboriginal people and the way they are understood in cultural and social terms.
Her works are held in the collections of the Tate,Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,National Gallery of Australia,Art Gallery of South Australia and Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Moffatt's first work that came to public attention was the 1989 Something more series of photographic works.Something more has been described as "iconic".
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 referenced the photojournalism and photo essays of Life magazine accompanied by captions. While the words are compelling, they don’t explain the images, indeed they tend to add to their enigmatic nature as though more information is a further dead end.
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 performed on location in Queensland's outback. Like Something More, Up in the sky employs the theme of race and violence, displaying a loose narrative set against the backdrop of a remote town, ‘a place of ruin’ and devastation populated by misfits and minor characters. It is one of Moffatt’s larger series of photographs and takes its visual ideas from Italian modernist cinema Accattone (1961) by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The story relies on a triangular mixed-race relationship. Of this work Moffatt stated: 'My work is full of emotion and drama, you can get to that drama by using a narrative, and my narratives are usually very simple, but I twist it … there is a storyline, but … there isn’t a traditional beginning, middle and end.'
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