Edited by Natalie King
ISBN: 978 050050 107 8
Memory theatre
Somewhere between fiction and history, the work of Tracey Moffatt is redolent with imaginative narratives. Working across photography, film and video, Moffatt takes the tempo of our times in highly staged photo dramas. Her carefully constructed scenarios are replete with a distinctive theatricality and resonant with references to film, art and the epic history of photography.
Moffatt’s incidents and vignettes depict disturbing, tender, funny and cinematic sequences. Through a type of photographic filmmaking, she accentuates the role of staging and framing in emotionally charged imagery. She writes: ‘world cinema fuelled my inbred manic excitement for images and drama’. With a voracious imagination and insatiable consumption of images, Moffatt depicts psychodramas that are taut visual arrangements with filmic twists, turns and tribulations, linked with the dense history of photography. On this subject, Moffatt has declared: ‘There is nothing quite like the power of the frozen negative image. In a way it is sexy. You can stare at it for as long as you like and as well you can think about it as you climb into bed.’
View File: My Horizon, Tracey Moffatt
