Born in Brisbane Australia in 1960, Tracey Moffatt studied visual communications at the Queensland College of Art, from which she graduated in 1982. Since her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 1989, she has exhibited extensively all over the world. In the 1980's and early 90's, she worked as a director on documentaries and music videos for television. She first gained significant critical acclaim for her film work when the short film "Night Cries" was selected for official competion at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film, "Bedevil," was also selected for Cannes in 1993. A major exhibition at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 1997/9 consolidated her international reputation. She is now based in New York and returns frequently to the north of Australia where she works and lives on the beach.
Whether filmic or photographic, each of Tracey Moffatt's images is are carefully constructed. None of them presents itself as a "reproduction of reality"; on the contrary, they are produced by meticulous artistry in the studio or in artificial decors, after a preparatory phase of drawing and the creation of a veritable storyboard, as well as a casting process and a technical study.Tracey Moffatt’s work appears as a surprising mix of the indeterminate and the brutally precise, the timeless and the contemporary. The result is a taut, sometimes disturbing body of work. The kinds of images she makes are often confronting, thought provoking reflections on contemporary Australian life, and post colonial theory.
Her series, Scarred for life, (a group of nine events, each captured in a single image), was created years after the celebrated series something more 1989, referred to in the introduction to the essay. While in the earlier one the sensuality of the poses and the languid of the colours soften the drama that is inexorably played out in the succession of photographs, in scarred for life the content is explicit, the exploitative photographs are blunt. In birth certificate we read, 'during the fight her mother threw her birth certificate at her. This is how she found out her father's real name' and see. Young woman with her head slumped against the bathroom sink, stricken by the truth. We see a similar look the eyes of a young aboriginal man in job hunt. He is leaning back against a wall I his white job-hunting shirt with his tie loosened staring into space: 'after three weeks he still couldn't find a job. His mother said to him, "maybe you're not good enough"'. She gives us life as is it,the harshness and acidity of human relations, adolescence with its fears of not being accepted. She addresses these themselves with clarity and power, starting from her identity as an aborigine so.an yet without ever seeking to judge, much less condemnation.
Five years later, Moffat produced a new scarred for life series based on stories told to her by people she has met. 'I think it is because everyone has a tragic tale to tell. And over the years people have come up to me. They couldn't wait to tell me their tragic story.' This second group is less aggressive than the first both in its images and in the accompanying texts, but it is every bit as effective, and perhaps even more universal. All can find something of their own adolescence in these images. In homemade hand knit a young lad Is walking clunky off the rugby field while his team mates smirk around him. The text reads: 'he knew his team mates were chuckling over his mother's hand knitted rugby uniform.' He knew, writes Moffatt. Like all her characters, he is a solitary hero who endures the world around him, redeeming with his dignity and suffering the effrontery and arrogance of those near him.
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