Tracey Moffatt AO, artist, was born in Brisbane and graduated from the Queensland College of Art in 1982. Moving to Sydney, in 1989 she held her first solo exhibition, Something More. In 1990 her short film Night Cries was selected for official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, as was her first feature-length film, Bedevil, in 1993. Following the photographic series Scarred for Life (1994) she was invited to exhibit in the Venice Biennale in 1997, and during that year held solo exhibitions in Germany, Denmark, France and the USA. Since then, she has built a high international reputation with a body of films and photographic series such as Laudanum (1998), Invocations (2000), Under the Sign of Scorpio (2005), First jobs (2008) and Spirit Landscapes (2013) reflecting on issues including race, childhood trauma, gender and popular culture. In 2007 she received the Infinity Award from New York’s International Center of Photography; in 2012 she had a solo show at the city’s Museum of Modern Art. In 2017 she will become the first indigenous Australian artist to present a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
The black and white photograph in this diptych was shot in the USA in 1999. It features Moffatt’s instructions for the retouching of the second image, which was hand-painted at a studio in New York in 2005.
Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Tim Fairfaix AM 2013
© Tracey Moffatt. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
Accession number: 2013.7.a-b
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Tracey Moffatt (age 39 in 1999)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves: who we read, who we watch, who we listen to, who we cheer for, who we aspire to be, and who we'll never forget. The Companion is available to buy online and in the Portrait Gallery Store.
Despite once expressing a limited interest in the self portrait, the idea of it has figured strongly in much of Tracey Moffatt's work and has done so in some of her most distinctive and compelling images.
In her self-portrait, Tracey Moffatt presents herself as her work.
Explore portraiture and come face to face with Australian identity, history, culture, creativity and diversity.
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