Tracey Moffatt

Biography

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia's leading contemporary artists. Since 1989, she has held numerous solo exhibitions in major museums around the world. Her short film Night Cries was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, followed by her first feature film, beDevil, in 1993. In 1997, she exhibited in Aperto at the Venice Biennale and at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York in 1997/98. Comprehensive survey exhibitions of her work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art (2003), Sydney and the Hasselblad Centre in Goteburg, Sweden (2004). In 2006, she had her first retrospective exhibition in Italy, at Spazio Oberdan, Milan. In 2007, Charta Publishers, Milan, published a monograph, The Moving Images of Tracey Moffatt. A recipient of the 2007 Infinity Award for art by the International Center of Photography, New York. A solo exhibition of her films and videos is currently being planned at the Museum of Modern Art. Moffatt is represented in North America by Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York and has been represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, since 1998.

www.roslynoxley9.com.au
www.trfineart.com

Artist Statement

Moffatt shot these photographs 13 years ago in 1997. It was only recently in 2006 that she found the black-and-white negatives by chance in her storeroom in Sydney. She wasn't looking for them; they just appeared. Moffatt had completely forgotten that she had shot this work. At the time, she had put these 20 rolls of negatives and contact sheets away because she didn't like them. She felt ashamed of the images and their simplicity, directness and obvious narrative.

In 1997, over a period of a week, Moffatt travelled to a mysterious location and shot these pictures. She prefers not to disclose the location shoot because she doesn't want the work to be 'located' as in a documentary shoot. The photos are not a 'document' of a 'place'. Rather the photos are intended to have a dream-like feel and look like they could have been shot in Australia's tropical north, or the Caribbean, or the Deep South in the US, or somewhere in South East Asia. Or possibly Africa.