Shakespeare to Winehouse open 9:00am–7:00pm on Thu, Fri, Sat from 7 July
In 1999, ten years after coming to critical attention in Australia, Tracey Moffatt AO (b. 1960) created the one and only self-portrait in her oeuvre. In the hand-coloured photograph, Moffatt presented herself as a photographer, holding a camera in her hands. The black-and-white photograph in this diptych is a different shot from the Self portrait of 1999, although it was clearly taken on the same occasion, with the artist wearing the same knitted olive-green top and head scarf. It features Moffatt's instructions for the retouching of the second image, which was hand-painted at a studio in New York in 2005. Although it appears as though Moffatt is standing in a sun-drenched landscape, the original photographs were taken in a studio in front of a painted set, a reference to the movie-style painted landscape sets in her photographic series Something More (1989) and her short film Night Cries – A Rural Tragedy (1989).
Purchased with funds provided by Tim Fairfax AM 2013
© Tracey Moffatt
Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
Tracey Moffatt AO (age 39 in 1999)
Tim Fairfax AC (53 portraits supported)
Are you aged between 4 and 8 years old? Why not join us in the galleries to explore portraits through drawing and creative activity?
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.