Tracey Moffatt

(Australian, born 1960)

Tracey Moffatt is a contemporary Australian artist known for her photographs and films. With a variety of narrative techniques, including text, collage, and set design, Moffatt explore issues of childhood trauma, Aboriginal people, and popular Australian culture. In her series Up in the Sky (1997), the artist employs the aesthetic conventions of Italian Neo-Realist films to portrays scenes of an outback town in which there is some lurking violence. “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,” she has explained. “There is a storyline, but there isn’t a traditional beginning, middle, and end.” Born on November 12, 1960 in Brisbane, Australia, she went on to attend the Queensland College of Art where she received a BA in 1982. In 1989, the artist’s work first came to public attention with her seriesSomething More. Since then, Moffatt’s career has been peppered with achievements, including premiering her film Bedevil at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and representing Australia in the 2017 Venice Biennale with her work My Horizon. She currently lives and works between Sydney, Australia and New York, NY. Moffatt’s works are held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, among others.