The complex pictorial compositions developed by the Australian photographer and film-maker, Tracey Moffat, have made her the country’s foremost avant-garde artist. Exhibitions of her work have been staged at the Biennales in Venice and Sao Paulo as well as at the Center for the Arts in New York. 

Born an Aboriginal half-caste in Brisbane in 1960, Moffat draws in her works on the cultural roots of the Western Anglo-Saxon world as well as those of the original inhabitants of Australia. The tensions between these two worlds are a recurrent theme in such films as »Nice Colored Girls« und »Night Cries –- A Rural Tragedy«. In »Lip and Artist« she focuses on the cultural reproduction of clichés in Hollywood films. While examining the roles of coloured actresses in documentary style, her vantage point is that of the artist. She is thus able to compile an ironic collage of the representative depiction of creative artists in the everyday routine of the mainstream media over a period of 50 years. »Heaven«, which examines the female view of the male body as an object, is located somewhere between investigation, desire and voyeurism and again is edged round with irony. The screening of Moffat’s prize-winning films will be accompanied by a showing of her first full-length film, »Bedevil«. This episode film tells of mythical encounters and eerie stories in a superbly staged and overdrawn Australian landscape. In her films Moffat addresses issues such as sexuality, birth and death, forms of symbolic power and cultural stereotypes. Using various stylistic elements, she produces emotionally charged picture stories that are situated between the real and the surreal.

• Nice Colored Girls [1987, Video, 18:31 min]
• Night Cries - A Rural Tragedy [1989, Video, 16:34 min]
• Bedevil [1993, Video, 86:22 min]
• Heaven [1997, Video, 22:44 min]
• Lip [1999, Video, 9:45 min]
• Artist [1999, Video, 9:50 min]

Organization / Institution

ZKM