TRACEY MOFFATT

TRACEY MOFFATT

Nestled deep in the bowels of the mind-boggling lower levels of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as part of their remarkable contemporary collection, is the recently opened (and creatively monikered) Photography Gallery. The new gallery, dedicated to displaying some of the AGNSW’s 4500-strong collection of photographs, will host three exhibitions a year, showcasing both the work of specific artists and of important historical periods throughout photography’s relatively brief history. The first show is Tracy Moffatt’s Up in the Sky, a series of photographs exploring race and violence in rural and outback Australia. The monochromatic shots portray a fractured narrative, each containing a sense of unresolved menace, confusion, and unmade connections, as they slowly reveal the story of a triangular mixed-race relationship. Up in the Sky is saved from a total sense of hopelessness by Moffatt’s attention to detail; in each image there are strange happenings and rifts that draw our gaze away from the composition’s focus and further into the fluid world we are being presented with, making us complicit in the image. This is its strength – the ability to force complicity in the acts of mistrust and violence taking place in the images before us; complicity that we should all take the time to feel.

Until Sep 18, Art Gallery of NSW, The Domain, .artgallery.nsw.gov.au

You May Also Like

Comments are closed.