Since the 1980s, Tracey Moffatt's work has been characterised by a delicious ambiguity that leaves viewers wondering where reality ends and fantasy begins. Her photographs and films regularly draw upon and critique popular culture and the history of cinema, art and photography, and employ devices such as painted backdrops, costumes and models. In earlier constructed realities, Moffatt' s characters navigate narratives that are mysterious and suggestive, with veiled references to the politics of identity and representation occurring often.
In response to MADE UP, Moffatt presents First Jobs - Self Portrait Series comprising eight brightly coloured photographs. Unlike her earlier works featuring actors, here the images depict the artist role-playing odd jobs she had as a teenager and college student in Australia in the 1970s and 80s. Using found imagery and photoshop illusion, Moffatt creates re-imagined scenes from her past, where she appears happily at work in various settings ordinarily associated with abject drudgery or low paid boredom, such as a canning factory or an office.
Here Moffatt's past is candy-coloured referencing not only the nostalgia of hand-coloured postcards of the 'Wish you were here' variety but also, and more personally, the delight she finds in looking back at the dreary, character-building jobs that gave her a work ethic. Read in this way, fact and fiction merge in the photographs to suggest that no matter how mundane the job, your mind can always travel or imagine a life beyond the factory floor.
[LESS]Since the 1980s, Tracey Moffatt's work has been characterised by a delicious ambiguity that leaves viewers wondering where reality ends and fantasy begins. Her photographs and films regularly draw upon and critique popular culture and the history of cinema, art and photography, and employ devices such as painted backdrops, costumes and models. In earlier constructed realities, Moffatt' s characters navigate narratives that are mysterious and suggestive, with veiled references to the politics of identity and representation occurring often.
In response to MADE UP, Moffatt presents First Jobs - Self Portrait Series comprising eight brightly coloured photographs. Unlike her earlier works featuring actors, here the images depict the artist role-playing odd jobs she had as a teenager and college student in Australia in the 1970s and 80s. Using found imagery and photoshop illusion, Moffatt creates re-imagined scenes from her past, where she appears happily at work in various settings ordinarily associated with abject drudgery or low paid boredom, such as a canning factory or an office.
Here Moffatt's past is candy-coloured referencing not only the nostalgia of hand-coloured postcards of the 'Wish you were here' variety but also, and more personally, the delight she finds in looking back at the dreary, character-building jobs that gave her a work ethic. Read in this way, fact and fiction merge in the photographs to suggest that no matter how mundane the job, your mind can always travel or imagine a life beyond the factory floor.
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