Roller Queens and ow-minded Machos

The World of

Tracey Mofatt

By Anne Versloot, 2 June 2000

She is one of the most popular artists of the moment: Australian-born Tracy Moffatt. Her original carefully staged photos and videos tell in particular, the stories of social conflicts and dropouts down under. Absolutely no sweet koala

bears or hopping Skippy

kangaroos.

Her blonde girlfriend plays with guitar and microphone for tough rock singers. The boy-next-door posing stiffly, imitates a hip actor from Planet of the Apes; his face hidden inside a tight, claustrophobic ape mask. The life of a film hero has never been shown like that.

Tracy Moffatt was born in Brisbane in 1960, and took her first snapshots at the age of 13 in the back garden of her parental home. In 1998, she made new prints of the now-faded photos, and called the coarse-grained offset prints ‘Backyard Series'. The crib photo is especially moving: five children

Mary (with a thick rose spray on her shoulders) and the Three Wise Men.

Cardboard Decorations
The three garden photos are meticulously arranged by Moffatt, an adopted half-aboriginal who grew up in a white family. These, and all her other works, are now on display in the city of Helmond, her first solo exhibition in The Netherlands. For the eight photo series and four films, which differ from each other considerably in appearance, she designed her own sets using cardboard. For example, the sensual, surrealistic series ‘Something More' (1989), with which she sprang to international prominence. It's about the unsuccessful attempt of a beautiful woman to seek a better life in a large city. The tension trickles out from the bright, lively colours.

Harrowing Snapshots
The photos in the series ‘Scarred for Life' (1994) are recognisable to everybody as snapshots of lost childhood memories; a girl washing a car, two kids playing, sisters who dress up to go out. But Moffatt's captions make for a harrowing effect: ‘Her father's nickname for her was useless' and ‘His mother caught him giving birth to a doll. He was banned from playing with the boy-next-door again'. Conflict and force, life and death, love and sexuality: all these themes run like a red thread through Moffatt's work. They reflect the struggle on the underside of Australian society, and the strained relations between men, women and children.

Menacing Nuns
American junk TV is the most important inspiration for Moffatt's roller skating series ‘Guapa' (1995) about the hyper ‘Roller Derby Queens' who knock each other half dead. Also scenes from movies such as ‘Mad Max' are recognisable in ‘Up in the Sky' (1997) about the tough existence in the Australian outback. It's an intriguing series of 25 yellow ochre and steel blue stills. Three menacing nuns, who have robbed a white mother of her dark baby, alternate with street fighters and thugs, who are laying into rusty old cars with hammers. How the story ends is a mystery. Just fill it in for yourself.

‘Night Cries'
Above all, Moffatt's work reflects her own, not always uncomplicated life. The 35mm film ‘Night Cries: a Rural Tragedy' (1989) is about the complex love-hate relationship between an elderly white woman and her half-aboriginal child. There are hilarious moments – the child eats in irritated fashion in three large bites from her mother's plate, leaving it empty, until she can't eat anymore – and ends with a splendid shot of the heartbroken young woman who appears to be sobbing in a foetus next to her dead mother.

Prudish Surf Macho's
But happily, it's not all about sorrow. Athletic black dancers pose confidently for Moffatt's camera in ‘Some Lads' (1986): powerful black and white portraits. And she is at her most amusing in the film ‘Heaven', a light-hearted documentary about the husky surfers with stomach muscles, which they clumsily and prudishly conceal under towels. Moffatt peeps at them from behind bushes and tree trunks, and zooms in on their crutch. Perhaps it's not art, but it's certainly a good half-hour of fun.

• Laudanum. The Photo series, videos and films of Tracey Moffatt', can be seen theough 25 June at the municipal museum in Helmond. More information on  +31 492 547575.

http://www.abc.net.au/message/blackarts/visual/s1012554.htm