Image: Still of Tracey Moffatt as Ruby in “Choo Choo Choo Choo”, “Bedevil” (1993)
Article by Nik McGrath
Tracey Moffatt describes herself as an image-maker rather than a photographer, artist or filmmaker. She prefers to construct stories in her films and photographs rather than capture reality.
Moffatt began telling stories using props and a cast of characters filmed on a Super 8 camera when she was growing up. Characters in her stories were acted out by kids in the neighbourhood and members of her extended family. She describes what she does now as the same, perhaps a bit more sophisticated.
For the past 40 years of her professional career, Moffatt has worked with camera operators and producers. She has always been the director and creative behind everything, but she doesn’t always hold the camera.
Tracey Moffatt was born in Brisbane in 1960 to an Indigenous mother and a father she has never known. She was fostered by an Irish-Australian woman, a family friend, when she was three. Her mum would often visit. Both of her mothers have directly influenced “Bedevil” (1996), which takes from her Indigenous and Irish upbringing.
Moffatt has a degree in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art, where she graduated in 1982.
She has impressively exhibited 100 solo shows in Europe, US and Australia, and represented Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 with her solo exhibition “My Horizon”.
Image: Tracey Moffatt on set of “Nice Coloured Girls” (1987)
Short film “Nice Coloured Girls”, Moffatt wrote, produced and directed in 1987. In Kings Cross, three young Indigenous women find what they call a ‘white captain’ to pay for their night out on the town. The women exploit the man like their matriarchs were exploited a century before. Moffatt highlights journal entries by European sailors who invaded Sydney in 1788, who wrote in their journals of how they used young Indigenous women for their own ends.
My introduction to Moffatt’s work came a few years later with “Something More”, a series of nine photographs created in 1989 – six colour, and three black and white commissioned by the Albury Regional Art Centre, New South Wales, and shot in Link Studios in Wodonga, Victoria. The Queensland Art Gallery purchased two works from this series in 1992. I grew up in Brissie, and remember vividly seeing this work in the Queensland Art Gallery. I remember the gallery I was in and how large the work seemed in comparison to me. It captivated me. The characters in the photos seemed to be out of a film in technicolor.
Image: “Something More No. 1”, Tracey Moffatt (1989)
“Something More No. 1” is the first image in the series. The painted scenery and lush colours of the photograph are made even more vibrant in the cibachrome print. Moffatt placed herself in the narrative of the image. She appears in the foreground of the photograph as the woman in red. Behind her a woman smokes a cigarette standing in the door frame to a wooden hut wearing a silk slip. A man wearing a singlet sits in the hut drinking a beer. Two boys stand beside the hut wearing shorts and shirts. A man stands behind the boys with long plaited hair, wearing a Chinese conical hat, also known as an Asian rice hat. Everyone behind the woman is looking in her direction, except for the smoking woman, who is looking downwards.
In her photography, Moffatt builds narrative through a series of images which tell a story, almost like stills from a film never made. “Something More” has visual elements that are precursors to “Bedevil”.
Image: Still of “Night Cries: a Rural Tragedy” (1989)
Moffatt’s short film “Night Cries: a Rural Tragedy” (1989) is about a young Indigenous woman played by Marcia Langdon adopted by a white woman who is disabled and heavily relies on her adopted daughter to care for her, in a harsh isolated location in the desert. Anyone who knows 1955 feature film “Jedda” can see the similarities in the storytelling. Stylistically “Night Cries” is a precursor to “Bedevil”.
As a child, Moffatt’s extended Indigenous and Irish Australian family told her ghost stories, which inspired her to write and direct “Bedevil”. The film has three ghost stories set in different rural locations with stylised and beautifully lit sets and painted skies. “Mr Chuck” about a boy who is haunted by an American GI who drowned in a swamp, starring Uncle Jack Charles. “Choo Choo Choo Choo” stars Moffatt as Ruby, a young woman who lives in outback Queensland, haunted by a ghost train. “Lovin’ the Spin I’m In” features dancing ghosts Minnie and Bebe who haunt a warehouse where their forbidden love met a tragic end.
Horror anthology films have a long history in the genre going back to the early 20th century. “Bedevil” is one of the best examples, in my opinion, up there with the greats such as Roger Corman’s “Tales of Terror” (1962), Mario Bava’s “Black Sabbath” (1963) which Melbourne Horror recently screened at Blood Ritual, “Trilogy of Terror” (1975) also screened at Blood Ritual, and “Creepshow” (1982).
Usually ghost stories really freak me out! I believe in ghosts. I experienced a ghost firsthand when I was a teenager visiting my uncle's hundred year old house in Geelong. When you believe in something, it makes it that much more frightening. What do you think of Moffatt’s ghost stories? You might think they are surreal and dream-like, using dream logic, which may confuse a logical sense of narrative.
This film is visually lush, it’s compelling, it’s a unique exploration of ghost stories in an Australian landscape, and it sits beautifully within Moffatt’s body of work.
Image: “Up in the Sky #1”, Tracey Moffatt (1998)
“Up in the Sky” is a 1998 series of 25 photos set in an outback town, staged like a film to depict the stolen generations. A white woman holds an Indigenous baby in her arms. Men fighting and the same child is held up in the sky by two nuns. Like all of Moffatt’s work, the narrative is non-linear, and left to the viewer to decide what it’s about.
“Lip” is a short directed by Moffatt and edited by Gary Hillberg, produced in 1999, the first in a Montages series collaboration between Moffatt and Hillberg, using tv and film clips masterfully collected and edited to give lip to the portrayal of black people and the incredible sassy and funny characters which have featured in cinema history.
“Artist” is another short from the Montages series created in 1999, directed by Moffatt and edited by Gary Hillberg, a cleverly curated collection of clips from tv and film depicting artists at work, and the struggle of being an artist.
Image: Still of Tracey Moffatt in “Art Calls” (2014)
“Art Calls” (2014) is a series of interviews Moffatt did with artists over Skype, including Destiny Deacon, Jenny Kee and Jan Billycan from the Kimberley. Moffatt asked the artists she interviewed what art means to them. This work was available as a series of episodes on ABC, as well as being exhibited in galleries around the world. Saw this work at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Fitzroy. Moffatt did a talk at RMIT about “Art Calls”. I seriously fangirled being in the same room as her, and wish I was brave enough to ask her a question, or to approach her after the talk, but I sadly didn’t. It was amazing to hear her talk and be in the same space as her.
The artist selected to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale is like winning the Archibald Prize in the art world! It’s a huge deal. Moffatt’s solo exhibition “My Horizon” at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 was also a big deal because Moffatt was the first solo Indigenous artist to exhibit in the Australian Pavilion. “My Horizon” included two videos “Vigil” and “The White Ghosts Sailed In” and two photographic series “Passage” and “Body Remembers”. Moffatt states about “My Horizon”: “The image of the horizon line is featured in most of my images; in my two photo-drama series, “Passage” and “Body Remembers”, my fictional characters are seen to gaze off out to the horizon line. My characters possibly dream of escape, or they are weighed down by their own memories or histories. The same can be said of my two video pieces, “The White Ghosts Sailed In” and “Vigil”. “My Horizon” can describe reaching one’s limitations or wanting to go beyond one’s limitations. It can be likened to a dream state, like when one looks out and beyond where one is. The horizon line can represent the far and distant future or the unobtainable. There are times in life when we all can see what is ‘coming over the horizon’, and this is when we make a move or we do nothing and just wait for whatever it is to arrive”.
Image: Photograph of “A Haunting”, Tracey Moffatt (2021)
“A Haunting”, Moffatt’s latest work, is an art installation, a red pulsing light from an abandoned farmhouse in regional New South Wales not far from Dubbo. The work was installed in 2021 and is ongoing. Moffatt fans can make the pilgrimage to visit the work as long as they don’t go onto the private property. You can see the farmhouse from the highway. “A Haunting” was made to encourage people to travel to regional areas, and like all of Moffatt’s work, it has multiple meanings, it forces people to consider colonisation and land ownership, it also acts as a beacon during this pandemic. Moffatt has stated about the work quote “A Haunting is a house with a rhythmic heartbeat and it burns red. It sits campfire-like and honours First Nations peoples on whose land it sits” end quote. She has also said that it could be interpreted as a crime scene. For horror fans, it might seem like a cabin in the woods scenario. I would love a road trip to visit this work, which is a departure from Moffatt’s work that has preceded it. She continues to excite and surprise with each work she shares with the world.
I hope you enjoy “Bedevil”. For those who are new to Moffatt’s work, I hope this film encourages you to seek out more of her work. It’s important to understand the significance of this First Nations icon in art and film history.
“Bedevil” is streaming on SBS OnDemand.