Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australias most acclaimed contemporary artists, recognised both nationally and internationally for her compelling visual narratives. For over three decades, she has worked predominantly in photography and film, creating works that are as much about storytelling as they are about visual form. Moffatts narratives often draw on personal memory and reflect on broader themes such as race, gender, sexuality, and identity, offering layers of meaning that resonate deeply with her audience. Raised in a foster family, Moffatts personal experience as a fair-skinned Indigenous woman profoundly shaped her artistic perspective. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communications from the Queensland College of Art in 1982 and soon began experimenting with filmmaking and photography. Her early works, including Nice Coloured Girls (1987), a short film exploring the colonial gaze and its impact on Aboriginal women, established her as a bold and innovative storyteller. Moffatt gained national and international attention with her 1989 photographic series Something More, a meticulously staged sequence blending cinematic and theatrical aesthetics. The series tackled themes of longing, alienation, and the complexities of identity, becoming a landmark in Australian art. Her works often address the fraught legacies of colonialism, the power dynamics of race and gender, and the tension between memory and myth. Throughout her career, Moffatt has drawn on her heritage while maintaining a universal appeal. Her 1998 series Up in the Sky, for example, explored the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their familiesa topic central to the Stolen Generationsthrough hauntingly sepia-toned photographs that evoke both historical records and surreal dreamscapes. Similarly, Scarred for Life (1994) uses mock magazine layouts to confront domestic violence, racial trauma, and societal expectations. As a central figure in the First Nations urban arts movement, Moffatt has been instrumental in bringing Indigenous perspectives to global audiences. Her solo exhibition My Horizon, which represented Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, marked a historic moment as she became the first solo Indigenous artist to receive this honor. The exhibition explored themes of exile, aspiration, and resilience, with works like Passage and Vigil reflecting on migration and global crises, while subtly referencing her own cultural background. Moffatts art has been exhibited extensively, with solo shows in Europe, the United States, and Australia, and her works are held in major collections, including the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Australia. Her contributions to Aboriginal art extend beyond her own practice; she has served as a role model for emerging Indigenous artists, demonstrating the potential of art to question, provoke, and inspire. By merging personal experience with broader social and cultural narratives, Tracey Moffatts work transcends boundaries, solidifying her legacy as a pioneering voice in contemporary art. With her distinctive visual language and commitment to storytelling, she continues to shape the discourse on Aboriginal identity and its place within Australias national and global cultural landscape. It was no doubt the experience of growing up ‘between cultures’ that sharpened photographer and filmmaker Tracey Moffatt’s acute perceptive faculties. Born to an Aboriginal mother and Irish father, she was adopted by a white working-class family and brought up in the suburban sprawl of outer Brisbane. Her birth mother would visit her there and, as Moffatt describes it, ‘attuned’ her to an Aboriginal identity. At the same time, the bedazzlements and bewilderments of popular European culture both provoked and fascinated her. From her early girlhood, she was intrigued by the images and the possibilities engendered by its purposeful arrangement. Staged neighbourhood snapshots already revealed her directorial talents and hinted at her future stellar career. Moffatt ‘manufactures’ her photographs or moving images rather than ‘takes’ them and consequently, imprints her own bodily self and her own sensibility upon them. She taps into areas of experience that are pushed to the edges of awareness out of habit, haste or social position. An early influence, she says, were the black and white, everyday-life photos that appeared in the 1960’s American Life magazine. To the innocuous ‘snap’ Moffatt applies a deconstructionist approach, looking beyond the obvious and the momentary, to touch upon the unseen forces at work. She brings these to the surface of the image in a surreal mesh of the past and present to reveal the imaginative and emotional ambiguity. The narratives that accompany her images are short and succinct but the power that they unleash in conjunction with these re-constructed visual renditions is often compelling and at times daunting. These narratives do not progress and resolve themselves in the customary manner. These are the frozen moments in the story that intrude on the plot and compellingly divert it, if only briefly. They open a pressure valve in what has been described as 'a boiling hot outburst' (Travis 2000: 555). Moffatt trained in her medium at the Queensland College of Art. Her early works addressed issues of identity and survival from the viewpoint of Indigenous Australians, though firmly focused upon modern motifs and stories rather than traditional ones. In her photo-series Scarred For life 1994, Moffatt’s own experiences of growing up, feed into themes about childhood memory and adolescent alienation, although photo-documentation and/or social comment are never her main imperative. Backyard nostalgia seems branded into the memory with pain.'I think my imagery comes from my subconscious,' Moffatt says,'…I think my work is very dreamlike' (Summerhayes 2007: 256). Her reluctance to be thought of as an Indigenous artist stems from her wish to express universal human themes, as reflected more broadly in her work after 1995. Moffatt’s reputation as an exceptional and significant creative voice upon the international art stage followed upon the release of her short experimental film, Night Cries, A Rural Tragedy 1989, and her photo series Something More 1989. Both are tales of women trapped in an arid, rural environment. Issues of race and sexuality, hope and despair, love and cruelty, vie for attention but Moffatt refrains from defining the end result in terms of any of these. No moral lesson is conveyed. As a storyteller, Moffatt varies her strategies of presentation and performance in order to find the most successful manner of the telling. Her highly contrived scenarios draw upon the post-modern techniques of pastiche and (visual) quotation and are thereby ‘super-saturated’ with shifting levels of meaning.'I am constantly thinking about composition in a photographic sense,' she says,'and framing and textures are very important to me' (cited in Summerhayes 2007). Her eclectic working method is fuelled by a natural curiosity. In the age of mass-production, it has been said that the image as such has lost its ‘aura’ of contemplative distance (Walter Benjamin) but Moffatt strives towards it once again, employing artifice to create the hyper-reality of myth. In a series of videos made with Gary Hillberg in New York (now her part-time home), Moffatt edits together short snippets from Hollywood films to create a fast-paced, pressure-cooker of emotion and action. In Lip 1999 black women servants ‘give lip’ to their so-called superiors. Artist 2000 explores the act of creation while Love 2003, features the Hollywood romance, over and over, from go to woe. Repeated moments of high drama and impending disaster in Doomed 2007, amuse and startle us, but also somewhat worryingly reflect the mundanity that inures us to events in the nightly television news. Such repetitive gestures subvert our tendency to suspend disbelief and draws awareness to underlying cultural perspectives while glancing humour and brief moments of seeming recognition hold our fascination. After the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Moffatt threaded her way through miles of footage to pick up the experience of athletes who came in just below the line of medal-winning and intense public adulation. This was the subject of her psychologically intriguing photo-series Fourth 2001. Moffatt’s more recent work embraces the era of digital technology with a heavy though playful reliance on computerized manipulation of the image. Adventure Series 2004, plays with the slick, dramatic scenarios of the 1970’s comic strip. Her move towards portraiture is heralded in Being Under the Sign of Scorpio 2005, where she enacts forty photo-portraits of acclaimed women. This exhibition gives expression to Moffatt as a performance artist, using her own body to act/speak on life and individuality.'Every piece I have ever made, be it film or photograph,' Moffatt says,'is in some way autobiographical. Each work depicts a mood or current obsession' (cited in Summerhayes 2007). Since her first solo show in Sydney in 1989, Moffatt has proved herself an articulate and communicative artist, willing to share her thoughts and creative processes. Her works have been shown widely in solo exhibitions and international art events throughout Europe, the USA and Australasia since 1995. Moffatt had the honour of representing Australia in the 2017 Venice Biennale, where her work was lauded as a roaring success. Alongside her almost yearly exhibitions in major museums and galleries around the world, she engages in an ongoing dialogue with her now international audience. Her celebrity status has been the inspiration behind her ‘paparazzi-style’ exploration of portraiture in photo-series The Beautiful Human Face 2007. Moffatt captures family and friends at their greatest moments of power, energy and excitement.'These portraits are in a way a mirror of myself, because the gleam in the eye you see here is my gleam, reflected back to me' Moffatt says (www. roslynoxley9. com). To her long list of honours and prizes, Moffatt has recently added the Infinity Award (2007) from the International Centre of Photography in New York for her outstanding contribution to the field.

2013 - winner of the Australia Council Visual Arts Award, Australia

2020 - Montages: The Full Cut, 1999-2015, part of PHOTO 2021, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat, VIC, Australia
2017 - My Horizon, Australian Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
2005 - Tracey Moffatt: In Review, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2005 - Tracey Moffatt: Under the Sign of Scorpio, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2005 - Blackspot, Monash University, Gippsland, VIC, Australia
2004 - Tracey Moffatt: Her Photography, Videos and Documentary Work, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2003 - Tracey Moffatt, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2002 - Tracey Moffatt, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
2002 - Tracey Moffatt, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, USA
2002 - Tracey Moffatt, Galerie Six Friedrich Lisa Ungar, Munich, Germany
2002 - Tracey Moffatt, Saint Mary's University Art Gallery, Halifax, Canada
2002 - Tracey Moffatt, Galerie Karlheinz Meyer, Karlsruhe, Germany
2002 - Fourth, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Ausstellung im Kunstforum Baloise, Basel, Switzerland
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, UK
2001 - Invocations, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK
2001 - Invocations from the Collection of Patrick Corrigan AM, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Conner Contemporary, Washington, DC, USA
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Australian Embassy, Washington, DC, USA
2001 - Fourth, L.A. Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany
2001 - Fourth, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2001 - Fourth, Paul Morris Gallery, New York, USA
2001 - Invocations, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, New York, USA
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, California Museum of Photography, Riverside, California, USA
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, University of North Texas Art Gallery, Denton, Texas, USA
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Tensta Konsthall, Tensta, Sweden
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Artsonje Center, Seoul, South Korea
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Artsonje Center, Gyeongju, South Korea
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand
2001 - Tracey Moffatt, Kunstforum Baloise, Basel, Switzerland
2001 - Invocations, Zinc Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
2001 - Fourth, Rebecca M. Camhi Gallery, Athens, Greece
2000 - Invocations, Photo & Company, Turin, Italy
2000 - Scarred for Life, Il Ponte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy
2000 - Scarred for Life II, Goddard de Fiddes, Perth, WA, Australia
2000 - Scarred for Life II, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, USA
2000 - Invocations, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, USA
2000 - Laudanum, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, USA
2000 - Laudanum, Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo, Brazil
2000 - Laudanum, Robert Birch Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2000 - Invocations, Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain
2000 - Invocations, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2000 - Invocations, L.A. Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, Kunstverein Freiburg im Marienbad, Freiburg, Germany
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, Neuer Leipziger Kunstverein, Leipzig, Germany
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen, Denmark
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, Gemeentemuseum Helmond, Helmond, Netherlands
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, Art + Public, Geneva, Switzerland
2000 - Tracey Moffatt, Artspace Auckland and Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North, New Zealand
1999 - Laudanum, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, USA
1999 - Laudanum, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1999 - Laudanum, L.A. Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany
1999 - Laudanum, Paul Morris Gallery, New York, USA
1999 - Laudanum, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Freiburger Kunstverein, Freiburg, Germany
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, France
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany
1999 - Laudanum, Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Six Friedrich Lisa Ungar Gallery, Munich, Germany
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Torch Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Lawing Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Le Case d'Arte, Milan, Italy
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Fundació La Caixa, Sala Sant Joan, Barcelona, Spain
1999 - Free Falling, ICA, Boston, USA
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, USA
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Parko, Tokyo, Japan
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, touring through Asia
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Galleri Christian Larsen, Stockholm, Sweden
1999 - Tracey Moffatt, Galerie Laage-Salomon, Paris, France
1998 - Up in the Sky, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Curtin University Gallery, Perth, WA, Australia
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Galleri Larsen, Stockholm, Sweden
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Italy
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Le Case d'Arte, Milan, Italy
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Il Ponte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy
1998 - Free Falling, Renaissance Society, Chicago, USA
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, L.A. Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Vorarlberger Kunstverein, Bregenz, Austria
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria
1998 - Tracey Moffatt, Magazin 4 / Vorarlberger Kunstverein, Bregenz, Austria
1997 - Free Falling, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, USA
1997 - Tracey Moffatt, L.A. Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany
1997 - Tracey Moffatt, Galerie Andreas Weiss, Berlin, Germany
1997 - Tracey Moffatt, Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen, Denmark
1997 - Tracey Moffatt: Films, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France
1995 - Guapa (Goodlooking), Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
1995 - Guapa (Goodlooking), Mori Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1995 - Short Takes, ArtPace, San Antonio, Texas, USA
1994 - Scarred for Life, Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
1992 - Pet Thang, Mori Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1992 - Tracey Moffatt, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, UK
1989 - Something More, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, NSW, Australia, touring exhibition

2025 – Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia (Collection Exhibition), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia
2023–2024 – Know My Name: Australian Women Artists (Travelling Exhibition), Australia
2022 – Free/State, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia
2022 – Land Abounds, Ngununggula Regional Gallery, Bowral, NSW, Australia
2017 – Plain Speak, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia
2016 – Over the Fence: Contemporary Indigenous Photography from the Corrigan Collection, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
2014 – Episodes: Australian Photography Now, DongGang Museum of Photography, Yeongwol, South Korea
2013 – Australia, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
2008 – Through the Artist’s Eyes: Tracey Moffatt and Gordon Bennett, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
2004 – Blak Insights, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
2004 – Colour Power: Aboriginal Art Post-1984, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2003 – Phantom of Pleasure, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria
2003 – M_ARS, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria
2002 – 2nd Sight: Australian Photography in the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2002 – Iconoclash: Beyond the Representation Crisis, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany
2002 – Video Works, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
2002 – Hollywood Revisited, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus, Denmark
2002 – True Fictions, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany
2002 – True Fictions, Kunstverein Lingen, Lingen, Germany
2002 – Connections: Contemporary Artists from Australia, House of Croatian Artists, Zagreb, Croatia
2002 – Collections Croisées, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
2002 – Melodrama: Lo Excesivo en la Imaginación Postmoderna, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
2002 – Barbara Kruger / Marlene Dumas / Tracey Moffatt, Monika Sprüth Galerie, Cologne, Germany
2002 – Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery: The First 20 Years, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2002 – Nocturne: Images of Night and Darkness from Colonial to Contemporary, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, VIC, Australia
2002 – Spectator Sport, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK
2002 – Other Views: Griffith University Art Collection, Griffith University Art Gallery, Nathan, QLD, Australia
2002 – Goddess, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA
2002 – Re:Action, Jan Weiner Gallery, Kansas City, USA
2002 – New Visions of the American West, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, USA
2002 – New Work, Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC, USA
2002 – Trauma, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK
2002 – Receipts, Abbaye Saint-André Centre d’Art Contemporain, Meymac, France
2002 – Reise ins Ich – Künstler / Selbst / Ich – Künstler des 20. Jahrhunderts in Selbstdarstellung, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg, Austria
2002 – Die Unheimliche Frau: Weiblichkeit im Surrealismus, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany
2002 – A Person Looks at a Work of Art…, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2002 – Feature: Art, Life and Cinema, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand
2002 – The Lightness of Being Unbearable, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2002 – It’s a Wild Party and We’re Having a Good Time, Paul Morris Gallery, New York, USA
2002 – LUMO 01 Passion: International Photography Triennial, Jyväskylä Art Museum, Jyväskylä, Finland
2002 – ARS 01, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland
2002 – Trauma (National Touring Exhibition), Hayward Gallery in collaboration with Dundee Contemporary Arts, London, UK
2002 – The Promise of Photography, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany
2002 – Ha Ha, Revolution Gallery, Ferndale, Michigan, USA
2002 – Sixth Annual Photography Auction and Benefit, Sotheby’s, New York, USA
2002 – Collaborations with Parkett: 1984 to Now, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
2002 – Audit, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg
2002 – 24th International Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2002 – Ohne Zögern / Without Hesitation!, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen, Germany
2002 – World Without End: Aspects of 20th Century Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2002 – Melodrama, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
2002 – Telling Tales: The Child in Contemporary Photography, Campbelltown Arts Centre; University of South Australia Art Museum, Adelaide; Warrnambool Art Gallery, Australia
2002 – Australian Art and Society 1901–2001, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia
2002 – Zeitgenössische Fotokunst aus Australien, Städtisches Kunstmuseum Chemnitz; Kulturzentrum Stuttgart, Germany
2002 – Other People’s Lives, Eyre / Moore Gallery, Seattle, Washington, USA
2002 – Completing Identities, Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA
2002 – Missing Link, Kunsthaus Dresden, Dresden, Germany
2002 – True Fiction, Museum Bad Arolsen, Arolsen, Germany
2002 – Begijnhof III, Galeria Estrany-de la Mota, Barcelona, Spain
2002 – Anstoss: Kunst, Sport und Politik, Albrecht-Dürer-Gesellschaft – Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany
2002 – Sport in der Zeitgenössischen Kunst, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany
2002 – Fotokunst der 90er Jahre aus der Sammlung Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Kunsthalle Kiel, Kiel, Germany
2002 – Encrucijada: Reflexiones en torno a la pintura actual, Sala de la Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
2002 – Mujeres que Hablan de Mujeres, Espacio Cultural El Tanque, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
2002 – Kunst und Krieg (Symposium), Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien, Vienna, Austria
2000 – Raconter des Histories, Galerie Laage-Salomon, Paris, France
2000 – Paper Cuts, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2000 – Ring of Fire, Aotea Centre / Carter Holt Harvey Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2000 – Dconstructivism – Life Back into Art, David Pestorius / South Bank Corporation, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
2000 – Deep Distance – Die Entfernung der Fotografie, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2000 – Drive – Progress – Power – Desire, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand
2000 – Veronica’s Revenge: Contemporary Perspectives on Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2000 – Common Ground, University of Technology Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2000 – All Stars 2000, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2000 – Aboriginal Art in Modern Worlds, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia; State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
2000 – Sporting Life, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2000 – Photography Now, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, USA
2000 – Flight Patterns, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
2000 – Behind the Scenes, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, USA
2000 – 12th Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2000 – Logo Merino: Sheep in Australian Art and Design, National Wool Museum, Geelong, VIC, Australia
2000 – Izima Kaoru / Tracey Moffatt / Bill Owens / Chris Verene, Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens, Greece
2000 – Zeitwenden, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany
2000 – Zeitwenden, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria
2000 – Presumed Innocent, CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
2000 – Biennale de Lyon d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France
2000 – Hans Hemmert / Tracey Moffatt / Andres Pinal / Frank Thiel: Fotografos de los Años Noventa en la Colección CGAC, Sala Alameda de la Diputación de Málaga, Málaga, Spain
2000 – Zeitgenössische Fotokunst aus Australien, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; Schlossmuseum, Velbert, Germany
2000 – High Five, Galerie Schedler, Zurich, Switzerland
2000 – 100 al 2000: il Secolo della Fotoarte, Fotology, Bologna, Italy
2000 – The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize 2000, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK
2000 – Mommy Dearest, Gimpel Fils, London, UK
2000 – 8e Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine, Geneva, Switzerland
2000 – Artist Films, Kunstverein München, Munich, Germany
2000 – Kinder im 20. Jahrhundert, Mittelrhein-Museum, Koblenz, Germany
2000 – Kinder im 20. Jahrhundert, Galerie der Stadt Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg, Germany
2000 – Telling Tales: The Child in Contemporary Photography, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne; Bendigo Art Gallery, Australia
2000 – Contemporary Group Show, Fifty One Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
1999 – Museum für Moderne Kunst, Leipzig, Germany
1999 – Girls Girls Girls, Galerie-Projektraum, Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne, Germany
1999 – Konstruksjon eller Virkelighet, Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Lillehammer, Norway
1999 – Life Cycles, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany
1999 – From Film, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK
1999 – La Casa, il Corpo, il Cuore, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria
1999 – Full Exposure: Contemporary Photography, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, New Jersey, USA
1999 – Wohin Kein Auge Reicht, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany
1999 – The Promise of Photography: Selections from the DG Bank Collection, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, USA
1999 – Rosa für Jungs, Hellblau für Mädchen, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, Germany
1999 – In de Ban van de Ring, Provinciaal Centrum voor Beeldende Kunst, Hasselt, Belgium
1999 – Kunstwelden im Dialog, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
1999 – Female, Wessel + O’Connor Gallery, New York, USA
1999 – Wonderland: Fotomanifestatie Noorderlicht 1999, Noorderlicht Fotogalerie, Groningen, Netherlands
1999 – Nuevas Visiones, Nuevas Pasiones, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain
1999 – A Sangre y Fuego, Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Castellón, Spain
1999 – Galerie Schnider, Ettlingen, Germany
1999 – Endzeit, Six Friedrich – Lisa Ungar, Munich, Germany
1999 – Telling Tales, Neue Galerie Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Germany
1999 – VH Biennale Internazionale di Fotografia, Turin, Italy
1999 – Macht und Fürsorge, Trinitatiskirche, Cologne, Germany
1999 – Missing Link – Menschenbilder in der Fotografie, Kunstmuseum Berlin, Berlin, Germany
1998 – Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent, Belgium
1998 – Family Viewing, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
1998 – Portraits, Paul Morris Gallery, New York, USA
1998 – Echolot, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany
1998 – Foto Triennale, Esslingen, Germany
1998 – Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain, Rochechouart, France
1998 – Artenergie – Art in Jeans, Palazzo Corsini, Florence, Italy
1998 – Die Nerven enden an den Fingerspitzen, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
1998 – Presumed Innocence, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, USA
1998 – Strange Days: Guinness Contemporary Art Exhibition, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1998 – Nature of Man, Lund Konsthall, Lund, Sweden
1998 – Roteiros x 7, XXVI Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
1998 – Life Is a Bitch, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1998 – Der Mensch (The Human Being), Kunstverein Schloss Plön, Plön, Germany
1998 – Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival, Pusan, South Korea
1998 – Horizont, Brecht Haus am Weißensee, Berlin, Germany
1998 – Fleeting Portraits, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, Germany
1997 – Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1997 – Group Show, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, USA
1997 – Group Show, Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, UK
1997 – Group Show, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1997 – Printemps de Cahors, Cahors, France
1997 – Steirischer Herbst 97, Graz, Austria
1997 – Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
1997 – Campo 6: The Spiral Village, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands
1997 – Subject to Representation, Gallery 101, Ottawa, Canada
1996 – Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
1996 – Campo 6: The Spiral Village, Museum of Modern Art, Turin, Italy
1996 – Jurassic Technologies Revenant, 10th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1996 – Prospect 96, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany
1996 – Short Stories, Altes Rathaus, Göttingen, Germany
1995 – Antipodean Currents, Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York, USA
1995 – Familiar Places, ICA, Boston, USA
1995 – Kwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea
1995 – New Works 95.2, ArtPace, San Antonio, Texas, USA
1995 – Perspecta 95, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1994 – Antipodean Currents, Kennedy Center, Washington, DC, USA
1994 – Power Works, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand
1994 – Eidetic Experiences (Touring Exhibition), Queensland Regional Galleries, Australia
1993 – The Boundary Rider, 9th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
1992 – Artist’s Projects, Adelaide Festival of the Arts, Adelaide, SA, Australia
1991 – From the Empire’s End, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain
1990 – Satellite Cultures, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA
1988 – Shades of Light, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia
1987 – Art and Aboriginality, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK
1986 – Aboriginal Islander Photographs, Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, ACT
Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide, SA
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD
TATE London, UK
Museum of Modern Art, New York

While she does not promote herself as an Aboriginal artist per se, Tracey Moffatt’s Aboriginal heritage ensures that she is included in the top 100 Aboriginal artists survey. She enjoys a very successful career through Roslyn Oxley’s representation in Australia and with works sold across a number of continents. However, her ranking amongst the most important Aboriginal artists of all time is principally due to the repeated sales of one particular photographic image created in 1991, as well as the most popular of those additional images in the same body of work.
Her photographs first appeared at auction in 2000 when three works were offered, of which two sold. The following year all 11 works offered found new homes and this spectacularly continued into 2002 when 17 of 21 works were successful. By this time her clearance rate was a very impressive 86%, which dropped slightly to 83% at the end of 2003. While her career record price was reached the following year when a suite of six Cibachrome prints from the Something More series and three black and white photographs sold for $227, 050, her secondary market results have been on a downward spiral ever since. Throughout the 2010s, only about a third of the works offered have managed to sell.
Moffatt's top 30 results at auction almost all consist of the same images from her Something More series. Unfortunately for Moffatt, the secondary market, in Australia at least, has considered her a one-trick pony. Little wonder she has refused auction houses copyright over this ubiquitous image in order to avoid being stereotyped. Nevertheless, Moffatt can hardly avoid it. Even Baz Lurhman, in his epic movie Australia, couldn’t resist dressing Nicole Kidman in a Cheongsam with a weatherboard backdrop as an homage.
All this must be the stuff of nightmares for Moffatt, who is a very fine artist. She is equally at home with prints and graphics as she is with photography. Her inclusion in important international exhibitions and the range of work she produces is likely to continue well into the future and this should, in time, round out her auction results. One thing is definite, however. Tracey Moffatt’s work is more worthy than her auction results indicate. Collectors would be well advised to delve deeper into her oeuvre. Her Up In The Sky series created in 1997, Scarred for Life 1994 and Some Boys are good examples of works very much worth collecting, especially given their currently reasonable prices.