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Nadia Phillips

Tracey Moffatt | My Horizon, Venice Biennale 2017


Tracey Moffatt is regarded as one of Australia's most successful Artists of in her homeland and abroad. Her photographs are evocative and reference the history of Art of Photography exploring her own childhood memories and fantasies, of focussing on issues of race sexuality and identity. Moffatt is best known for her photographic works, but she has created numerous short films, documentaries, focussing on Australian Aboriginal people.

I recently went to the Venice Biennale to see her work at the Australian Pavilion, it more than surpassed my expectation. Upon entering into the semi darkness, the images were mesmerising, evocative and the pain of her subjects was palpable.

Tracey Moffatt grew up in foster care in a working class suburb in Brisbane.

Moffatt was fascinated with the. Media, in particular its randomness and emotional influence of images of fantasy and other realities from across the world, film sequences were filed away in her memory. For the Venice Biennale Moffatt has assembled two new photographic series.,

Body Remembers and Passage

Body Remembers is a suite of ten large photographs tinged with sepia. The story tells of a maid returning to a ruin wearing a 1950's black dress trimmed with lace, a white apron and Victorian mourning earrings. The maid is trapped in mourning within the ruin.

In the Passage series, Moffatt recounted the devastation and shock she felt as she watched the Christmas Island boat wreck on the television news in 2010. A boat carrying ninety asylum seekers, mostly from Iran and Iraq, it sank off the coast of Christmas Island. "This tragedy has haunted me as do many stories'. Moffatt reimagines the tragic plight of the refugees, a film noir fictional vision to do with a desperate journey of trying to find a better life. In an interview with Natalie King Moffatt said that the tragedy has haunted her ever since. The old world is out, the new world is coming in and the borders cannot stay closed. Human beings, in their desperation will always find a way in.

Find your way to this amazing wonderful exhibition and celebrate the talent of the extraordinary artist Tracey Moffatt

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