Tracey Moffatt / Australia/United States b.1960 / Gary Hillberg (collaborating artist) / Australia b.1952 / Other (still) 2009 / DVD transferred to Digital Betacam: 7 minutes, colour, sound / Purchased 2010 with funds from Xstrata Community Partnership Program Queensland through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

Tracey Moffatt
Other 2009

Not Currently on Display

Tracey Moffatt’s videos present a montage collated in response to a particular theme. Other 2009 is the last in a suite of seven video works that includes Lip 1999, Artist 2000, Love 2003, Doomed 2007, Revolution 2008, Mother 2009.

Witty, sexy and fast-paced, Other reminds us that popular films create compelling images of relationships across race and gender lines. In the contemporary world, people migrate, meet, love and part in unexpected ways that underline our ‘other-ness’ but, at the same time, also rely on our common humanity. Desires are implanted in our hearts by forces beyond our control, yet acting them out always remains our decision, our responsibility, our hope for redemption.1

Endnotes:

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

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).