Tracey Moffatt / Australia/United States b.1960 / Beauties (in mulberry) 1997 / Black and white photograph, colour tinted in lab during printing process on paper, ed. 19/20 / 124.6 x 102.8cm / Purchased 2008 with funds from Xstrata Community Partnership Program Queensland through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt
Beauties (in mulberry) 1997

Not Currently on Display

Tracey Moffatt’s Beauties (in mulberry) 1997 references the rodeo scene that grew out of Aboriginal indentured labour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moffatt embraces a time in history that could be viewed through a lens of sadness or defeat. Instead the artist presents an image of her uncle dressed as a Hollywood movie-star style cowboy through a lens of beauty.

Under the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897 (QLD), Aboriginal people of all ages were taken from their homes and sent to work on cattle and sheep properties across Australia. Their wages were paid to the government, and a portion was paid in rations back to Indigenous families. The indentured workers took fierce pride in their cowboy skills and many became famous rodeo riders.

Tracey Moffatt was born in 1960 and grew up in Brisbane. After graduating from the Queensland College of Art, where she studied film and video production, she moved to Sydney in 1983 and worked as an independent filmmaker and photographer. As artist in residence at the Albury Regional Art Centre in 1989, she produced her critically acclaimed ‘Something more’ series.

Moffatt gained critical acclaim for her short film Night cries: A rural tragedy, which competed in the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. Moffatt’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions, including QAGOMA’s ‘Tracey Moffatt: Spirited’ in 2014, which showcased the ‘Night spirits’ series, and major group exhibitions such as the São Paulo Biennial and the Venice Biennale in 1997, and the Sydney Biennale in 1992, 1996 and 2000.

Moffatt refuses to be categorised as an ‘Aboriginal’ artist, finding the term stereotypical and politicised. However, several of her works have been concerned with issues especially affecting Indigenous Australians such as poverty, displacement and racism. She represented Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.

Endnotes:

1Ewington, Julie. ‘Tracey Moffatt: Plantation’, in ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2009, p.140, col. ills p.26 (stills).