Past exhibitions

Tracey Moffatt is arguably one of Australia’s most successful international artists, known for her film, photography and video works. Drawing on cinema, television and the media, her art is as likely to be inspired by popular culture and recollections of images from her childhood and adolescence, as it is by art history.

One of her larger photographic series, Moffatt’s Up in the sky 1997 takes many of its visual cues from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1961 masterpiece of Italian cinema Accattone. The series of 25 photographs examines the subject of race and violence, presenting a loose narrative set against the backdrop of an outback town populated by misfits and marginal characters. The story hinges on a triangular mixed-race relationship. Unlike previous series, it was shot on location and doesn’t use the scenography that is a feature of her earlier work such as 1989’s Something more.

Tracey Moffatt: Up in the sky is the first display in the Gallery’s new dedicated photography gallery, part of our new contemporary galleries.