Tracey Moffatt, Victoria Miro Gallery, London - Invocations

Tracey Moffatt: Invocations

Victoria Miro Gallery, London

28 March - 12 May 2001

The Victoria Miro Gallery presents a solo exhibition of TRACEY MOFFATT's latest series Invocations. The exhibition coincides with a mid-career survey show at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh and a major presentation of her film and video works at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station as well as the existing works on display in the permanent collection at Tate Modern. Invocations is a return to the large scale format and rich colour of her earlier classic work, Something More. Grand in both scale and execution, Tracey Moffatt hired film studios and had elaborate sets constructed evoking a 'Disney meets Goya' landscape. The central character is at once a young girl in a menacing enchanted forest and a seductive fully grown woman in a barren desert, juxtaposed with demonic figures and the sensuous muscularity of a naked male protagonist. The work recalls any number of storybooks from childhood with the grittier fictional landscapes of adulthood.

Born in 1960 in Brisbane, TRACEY MOFFATT is Australia's most successful artist internationally. She has had over 50 solo exhibitions in Europe and the US, and is regularly curated into major group shows, including the 1997 Venice Biennale, the 1992/93, 1996 and 2000 Sydney Biennales, Prospect '96, and the 1996 and 1998 São Paulo Biennales. Her films have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and many articles and several books have been written about her work. In 1997 a major show was held at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York, and in 1999 a large survey was held at Fundacio "la Caixa" in Barcelona and the Centre Nationale de la Photographie, Paris. Moffatt lives and works in Sydney and New York. New and Recent Work 1990 - 2000 The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (7 April -19 May 2001); Film and Video works Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London (4 May - 3 June 2001)

VICTORIA MIRO GALLERY

16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW

www.victoria-miro.com

Tracey Moffatt at Dia Center for the Arts, NYC

Tracey Moffatt: Free-falling
Dia Center for the Arts, New York
October 9, 1997 - June 14, 1998

Dia Center for the Arts presents an exhibition of the work of Australian photographer and filmmaker, Tracey Moffatt. This exhibition, entitled Free-falling, will be on view on the fourth floor of Dia's galleries at 548 West 22nd Street, New York City.

Free-falling includes two newly commissioned works: a suite of twenty-five photographs called Up in the Sky (1996) and a video installation, Tracey Moffatt's first in this medium. The subject of this video piece will be a surfer, a figure close to the heart of Australia's contemporary self-image. By contrast, Up in the Sky, which was shot near Broken Hill in the Outback, draws on imagery and a landscape that have long been central to the Australian mythos. In addition, the exhibition includes Guapa (Goodlooking), a series of twelve monochrome photographs loosely based on the theme of the roller derby, which Tracey Moffatt made in 1995 while on a residency at ArtPace in San Antonio, and Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1990), her early but prophetic short film. Guapa explores the intersection of violence with eroticism as sanctioned under the umbrella of sport. Silhouetted against neutral backdrops, the carefully choreographed female contestants create formally compelling images recalling at times sculptural groupings from the art of the past: artifice is as intrinsic to this sport as it is to Tracey Moffatt's aesthetic.

Of Abori-ginal descent, Tracey Moffatt has gained increasing international attention in the past several years. In 1995 she was awarded a prize at the Kwangju Biennale in Korea, and two of her films were shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Given that she is also included in this year's Venice Biennale and Site Santa Fe exhibitions, Tracey Moffatt, who was born in 1960 in Brisbane, is among the preeminent Australian artists of her generation. Free-falling is her most substantial exhibition to date.

Major funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Lannan Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Embassy of Australia on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and The Australia Council for the Arts with an additional generous contribution by the Wolfensohn Family Foundation.

Dia Center for the Arts
www.diacenter.org