Exhibition Dates: 5 July – 28 July 2007
Lately I’ve been making portraits I really like making them and I want them to be my on going project for a while.
So far I’ve been photographing people who cross my path from the art, fashion, entertainment, business and political worlds, as well as family and friends or whom ever I think is very original and great looking. Except this will be a problem and my portrait project will never finish because I think everyone has the potential to be great looking!
The twelve people I show here are open human beings; look at how they are all smiling up a storm. These people are all laughing at my jokes. Sometimes I had to work hard and crack jokes to get them to smile. These portraits are in a way a mirror of myself, because the gleam in the eye you see here is my gleam reflected back at me.
I shot the portraits paparazzi style straight on with a simple digital flash camera at art exhibition openings, book launches, fashion shows and glamorous parties in New York, London, Milan, Sydney and Melbourne, oh and on the Sunshine beach Australia (my brother Lloyd), throughout 2006-2007. The idea was to capture people at their very best, at public events. At parties everyone’s energy is high and everyone is dressed up and polished and willing to pose. One afternoon I did try to photograph some people in my cramped New York loft, but afternoon is when I get the usual artist’s (women’s) low energy depression and yearn for chocolate. These stilted afternoon portraits shot in natural light turned out lousy and it wasn’t because of my willing subjects but because of ME. To shoot such luminous portraits I need the buzz of a social event around me. I mysteriously pick up on the buzz and transfer my energy to the subject. It is really very interesting.
I’ve cropped the face showing only three quarters of it, not the full face. I’ve discovered that this three quarter cropping is in fact everyone’s most flattering angle. I’ve tilted everyone to the right and it’s as if they are peeking playfully around a doorway at me. In some cases I played God and switched people’s sides. For example if a person’s happiest side turned out to be their left side I digitally flipped it over to the right side and used it. Who is to notice this? The great mystery of the human face is that when we beam unselfconsciously one side is in fact happier than the other. Our faces are not symmetrical, one eye is larger than the other, our hair is thinner on one side than the other, and our mouth can change dramatically from one side to the other.
On the computer I added bright coloured paint splatters in the background because I wanted the visual feel to be like when one of those confetti guns go off at a party. For each person I tested out various coloured backgrounds and strangely only one colour seemed to sit with each person. For example a red background just didn’t work for my Sydney art dealer Roslyn Oxley, because of her fair skin but instead turquoise blue like her eyes helped to anchor the picture. I can’t wait to make more portraits and to continue my journey into the mysteries of the beautiful human face.
Tracey Moffatt, 2007
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DOOMED
Tracey Moffatt’s video collage, Doomed, features depictions of doom and destruction – war, violence and terror – as they appear in cinema, one of our entertainment options. In collaboration with Gary Hillberg, with whom she made Love (2003), Artist (2000) and Lip (1999), Doomed comprises cut-and paste editing techniques in a highly entertaining and black-humorous take on the bleak side of our current psychological landscape. Moffatt’s film looks at both entirely fictional and reconstructed disastrous events. Each scene carries a particular cargo of references. They occupy their own unique symbolism and filmic territory – the poignant, sublime and epic, the tragic, the B-grade and downright trashy. The accumulation of scenes, however, within Moffatt’s own essaying, creates a narrative whole comprised of parts. Not only does Moffatt play within the ‘disaster’ genre, re-presenting representations, she revels in it. Moffatt points at how the viewer is involved in filmic narratives through the emotionally hook, by the promise of imminent disaster, an important narrative device.
Moffatt’s film itself is crafted with introduction, body, finale – a presentation of the form of filmic entertainment, as well as ‘art as entertainment’. The soundtrack builds and peaks – emotive, and a central device in journeying through sequence to climactic effect. Music manipulates, and is itself thoroughly entertaining. It is important that the title ‘Doomed’ has the quality of the not yet destroyed. It is a description that is applied on individuals, families, lovers, politics, and nations – an observation made from the outside and yet containing the possibility (read hope) that situations can be salvaged.
Naomi Evans, 2007
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Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists as well as being an artist of international significance. Since her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 1989, she has had numerous solo exhibitions in major museums around the world. Working in photography, film and video, Moffatt first gained significant critical acclaim when her short film Night Cries was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film, beDevil, was also selected for Cannes in 1993. In 1997, she was invited to exhibit in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale. A major exhibition of Moffatt’s work was held at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 1997/98 which consolidated her international reputation. Recently, comprehensive survey exhibitions of Moffatt’s work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Hasselblad Centre in Goteburg, Sweden. The new monograph, ‘The Moving Images of Tracey Moffatt’ by Dr Catherine Summerhayes, is soon to be published by Charta Publishers, Milan.
Tracey Moffatt was the recipient of the 2007 Infinity Award for art by the International Center of Photography, New York. Infinity Awards are given for outstanding achievements in photography by honoring individuals with distinguished careers in the field and by identifying future luminaries.
Tracey Moffatt The Burning
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2024
Ten Thousand Suns
24th Biennale of Sydney, 2024
Group Show, The First 40 Years
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2024
Group Show, nightshifts
Buxton Contemporary, 2023
Thinking Historically in the Present
Sharjah Biennial 15, 2023
Free/State
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, 2022
Tracey Moffatt A Haunting
Castlereagh Highway, Armatree, New South Wales, 2021-24
Tracey Moffatt Portals
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2019
Tracey Moffatt My Horizon
57th Venice Biennale, 2017
Tracey Moffatt Kaleidoscope
Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, 2015
Tracey Moffatt Spirit Landscapes
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2013
Group Show, Head On Photography Festival
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2011
Tracey Moffatt Plantation and Other
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2010
Tracey Moffatt Mother
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2009
Tracey Moffatt First Jobs Series
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2008
Tracey Moffatt Portraits and DOOMED
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2007
Tracey Moffatt Under the Sign of Scorpio
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2005
Tracey Moffatt Adventure Series
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2004
Group Show, Dirty Dozen
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2002
Group Show, The First 20 Years
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2002
Tracey Moffatt Fourth
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2001
Group Show, All Stars
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2000
Tracey Moffatt Invocations
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2000
Tracey Moffatt Scarred For Life II
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2000
Tracey Moffatt Laudanum
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1999
Tracey Moffatt Backyard Series
Online Gallery, 1998
Tracey Moffatt Up In The Sky
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1998
Group Show
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1997
Tracey Moffatt GUAPA (Goodlooking)
Online Gallery, 1995
Tracey Moffatt Beauties
Online Gallery, 1994
Tracey Moffatt Scarred For Life
Online Gallery, 1994
Tracey Moffatt Pet Thang
Online Gallery, 1991
Tracey Moffatt Something More
Online Gallery, 1989