Tracey Moffatt: narratives

Venue: Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Dates: 26 February – 20 March 2011
Cost: Adult $10; Concession $8; Member $6; Students $6;
Child (U16) Free; Season ticket $10, available to Members only
Click on the images for a larger view

Tracey Moffatt is arguably the most successful and renowned Australian artist working internationally today. For the first time, Adelaide audiences will see the greatest works from across her career in a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, as part of the 2011 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival.

Tracey Moffatt: narratives features 95 photographs and 10 DVD works dating from the 1980s to today, which draw on Moffatt’s interest in popular visual culture and the histories of cinema and art.

Moffatt devotees will enjoy the first opportunity in Adelaide to see the entire series displayed together (consisting of Something More [1989], Scarred for Life I and II [1994 and 1999], Up in the Sky [1997] , Invocations [2000] and Adventure Series [2004]); works which all engage audiences in ruminations on race, Australian history and mythology, childhood and memory, and gender.

Tracey Moffatt is famous for casting herself as a characters in her photographs, beginning with the landmark Something More series in which she stars as the beautiful young heroine who perilously sets out to discover the world beyond her rural home; to the Adventure Series of 2004 where she appears as a glamorous Star Trek-like figure.

The exhibition also includes Moffatt’s famous video montage collaborations with Gary Hillberg: Lip [1999], Artist [2000], Love [2003], and Doomed [2007], among others, in which she creates sensational new narratives by editing together clips from Hollywood films.

Tracey Moffatt: narratives is touring from the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne and for its Adelaide season has been significantly enhanced to showcase even more of Moffatt’s oeuvre.

The exhibition is Curated by Stephen Zagala from Monash Gallery of Art and Co-Curated by Maria Zagala from the Art Gallery of South Australia (Stephen and Maria are related by marriage).

A complementary public program for the exhibition and Adelaide Film Festival includes free screenings of Moffatt’s films, including Nice Coloured Girls [1987], Night Cries [1990], Heaven [1997] and BeDevil [1993].

Tracey Moffatt: narratives is on show at the Art Gallery of South Australia from 26 February to 20 March and is part of the official program of the 2011 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival.

Image: Tracey Moffatt, Australia, 1960, Something More (no. 3), from the series of 9 photographs, ‘Something More’ 1989, direct
positive colour photograph, 98.0 × 127.0 cm (image). Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney