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Lot Essay
Other examples of this work are illustrated in G Newton and T Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt - Fever Pitch, Sydney, 1995, illus. p. 18 and p. 67 and T Bond The Boundary Rider - The Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 1992, illus. p. 166
"Pet Thang presents a naked woman floating in darkness with images of a sheep and a lamb. She is some old goddess perhaps; or a bacchante. The images are too lewd to be linked with the cute lamb of the Madonna. Indeed Pet Thang is not a narrative which invites speculation and completion. Rather it develops a certain suspension and intimacy...
There are echoes of the extravagant fantasies in surrealist films such as those of Jean Cocteau, yet Pet Thang as a title wafts with the twang and whine of country and western music: 'Pet Thanngg, you make my heart sinngg'. The title is irreverent to both surrealism and S&M. It seems also to mock the political realities of white European pastoral achievement symbolised by the sheep. Yet the series remains genuinely mysterious and elliptical beyond its melodrama" (G Newton, op.cit., pp. 19-20)
"Pet Thang presents a naked woman floating in darkness with images of a sheep and a lamb. She is some old goddess perhaps; or a bacchante. The images are too lewd to be linked with the cute lamb of the Madonna. Indeed Pet Thang is not a narrative which invites speculation and completion. Rather it develops a certain suspension and intimacy...
There are echoes of the extravagant fantasies in surrealist films such as those of Jean Cocteau, yet Pet Thang as a title wafts with the twang and whine of country and western music: 'Pet Thanngg, you make my heart sinngg'. The title is irreverent to both surrealism and S&M. It seems also to mock the political realities of white European pastoral achievement symbolised by the sheep. Yet the series remains genuinely mysterious and elliptical beyond its melodrama" (G Newton, op.cit., pp. 19-20)