Tracey Moffatt

Close-up stills of white Hollywood stars – including Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, looking aghast and horrified – are intercut with news shots of boats crowded with refugees. Peering through slatted blinds and homing in with binoculars, the wide-eyed and troubled movie characters seem to survey crowded decks. The images of the refugees are manipulated, cropped, recoloured, sometimes reduced to almost abstract blobs. Vigil is short, terse and, with its increasing tempo, extremely powerful. The more you watch, the worse it gets. Stuck in their roles and behind their windows, the stars act out their emotions. Meanwhile, genuine human misery goes on, visibly manipulated for our consumption.

Mother compiles clips of mother figures from classic Hollywood cinema and television dramas. The figures range from the Virgin Mary and Mother Courage, to characters from Maude (1972–78), Aliens (1986), Imitation of Life (1959), and American Gangster (2007). The characters play out scenes of care, loss, emotional manipulation, abandonment, and grief. The intense relationships between mothers and daughters are especially prominent.

Tracey Moffatt’s fast paced montage videos compile scenes from film and television programs selected in response to a particular theme or coding. This is the final work in a suite of 7 videos made over the last decade; the previous works include ‘Lip’ 1999, ‘Artist’ 2000, ‘Love’ 2003, ‘Doomed’ 2007, ‘Revolution’ 2008 and ‘Mother’ 2009. 'Other' is one of the most mesmerising of the series as it edits together scenes of interracial encounters. It opens with first contact sequences, films in which the beach and the shallow waters are a zone of encounter between ships and canoes, between Europeans and non-Europeans. It then moves to images of looking, of two different peoples meeting for the first time and appraising each other visually. As imagined by Hollywood and TV directors, this is a moment of both curiosity and desire, where glances become lingering and erotically charged.

A collection of scenes of destruction from disaster movies.

In ‘Love’, the subtleties of first desires to climactic scenes of impassioned dialogue and action, to betrayal, disgust and violence that have played out over the history of film are ripped from original contexts and edited into a repetitive staccato rush, regurgitating, for our entertainment, horror and critique, the stereotypical, hyperbolic trajectory of (heterosexual) love. Through this process Moffatt unites the graphic punch and suggestiveness of the still image with the satisfaction of a complete movie narrative. In the end, its only a movie. ‘Love’ embodies Moffatt’s desire to create work that has an ‘international look’ and deal with ‘universal predicaments’. 'Love' is both parody and pastiche, critical comment, and wryly humorous.

Moffatt's Artist is a collection of clips from movies and television programs that depict artists at work, at play and in the act of creation. By showing the particular bias of television and cinema to what the role of an artist apparently means to modern society, the film reflects the sometimes uninformed, sometimes humorous view of society towards artists today.

It is Hollywood’s favorite role for Black women: the maid. Sassy or sweet, snickeringly attentive or flippantly dismissive, the performers who play them steal every scene they are in, and Tracy Moffatt’s entertaining video collage reveals the narrow margin Hollywood has allowed Black actresses to shine in. But shine they do.

This playful video from famed director and photographer Tracey Moffatt turns the tables on traditional representations of desire to examine the power of the female gaze in the objectification of men’s bodies. HEAVEN begins with surreptitiously taped documentary footage of brawny surfers changing in and out of bathing and wet-suits. While the soundtrack switches between the ocean surf and male chanting, Moffatt moves closer to alternately flirt with and tease her subjects, who respond with a combination of preening and macho reticence.

Three stories of the supernatural are recounted in this anthology. Rick, an Aboriginal boy living near a swamp on Bribie Island, is haunted by an American solider who drowned in quicksand. Ruby and her family live in a house near long-abandoned train tracks, which still carry ghostly apparitions. A landlord has trouble evicting the tenants of an old warehouse: a couple that's been dead for years

Three stories of the supernatural are recounted in this anthology. Rick, an Aboriginal boy living near a swamp on Bribie Island, is haunted by an American solider who drowned in quicksand. Ruby and her family live in a house near long-abandoned train tracks, which still carry ghostly apparitions. A landlord has trouble evicting the tenants of an old warehouse: a couple that's been dead for years

Three stories of the supernatural are recounted in this anthology. Rick, an Aboriginal boy living near a swamp on Bribie Island, is haunted by an American solider who drowned in quicksand. Ruby and her family live in a house near long-abandoned train tracks, which still carry ghostly apparitions. A landlord has trouble evicting the tenants of an old warehouse: a couple that's been dead for years

A short film about the relationship between an Aboriginal daughter and her white mother. The daughter, now the sole carer of her dying mother, dreams of far away places, the haunted look in her eyes loaded with a sense of what could have been. Famous Aboriginal singer, Jimmy Little, sings 'Royal Telephone', evoking the presence of Christianity and its role in the assimilation of Aboriginal people. The final scene sees the daughter lying in a foetal position next to her mother, crying. Assimilation, then, can be understood as a pain experienced by both the Aboriginal daughter as well as the white mother.

A short film about the relationship between an Aboriginal daughter and her white mother. The daughter, now the sole carer of her dying mother, dreams of far away places, the haunted look in her eyes loaded with a sense of what could have been. Famous Aboriginal singer, Jimmy Little, sings 'Royal Telephone', evoking the presence of Christianity and its role in the assimilation of Aboriginal people. The final scene sees the daughter lying in a foetal position next to her mother, crying. Assimilation, then, can be understood as a pain experienced by both the Aboriginal daughter as well as the white mother.

Tracey Moffatt’s work, influenced by cinema and pop culture, probes misconceptions about Aboriginality and explores gender, sexuality and identity.

Through dance, voice and photographs, the confident, personal story of a talented young Aboriginal dancer is interwoven with the sombre history of Aboriginal women since European colonisation of Australia.

Nice Coloured Girls is a short film classic by Tracey Moffatt, one of Australia's foremost visual artists. Three Aboriginal women cruise through Kings Cross and pick up a 'captain' (a drunken white man). They encourage him to spend his money on them and to drink until incapacitated while they steal his wallet and race off to catch a cab, self-satisfied. Nice Coloured Girls contrasts the relationship between Aboriginal women and white men in the past and present.

Nice Coloured Girls is a short film classic by Tracey Moffatt, one of Australia's foremost visual artists. Three Aboriginal women cruise through Kings Cross and pick up a 'captain' (a drunken white man). They encourage him to spend his money on them and to drink until incapacitated while they steal his wallet and race off to catch a cab, self-satisfied. Nice Coloured Girls contrasts the relationship between Aboriginal women and white men in the past and present.

Nice Coloured Girls is a short film classic by Tracey Moffatt, one of Australia's foremost visual artists. Three Aboriginal women cruise through Kings Cross and pick up a 'captain' (a drunken white man). They encourage him to spend his money on them and to drink until incapacitated while they steal his wallet and race off to catch a cab, self-satisfied. Nice Coloured Girls contrasts the relationship between Aboriginal women and white men in the past and present.