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拍品专文
Something More was created while Moffatt was undertaking an artist's residency at the Albury Regional Art Gallery in regional New South Wales in 1989. This series was to become the catalyst that brought her international recognition; inspiring an ongoing international curatorial and commercial demand for her work and positioning Moffatt as arguably Australia's most internationally successful contemporary artist.
Recalling stills from a film, the narrative of Something More initially appears to tread a well-worn path. A young woman from an apparently rural and disadvantaged background dreams of a better life and sets forth on her journey of discovery, only to meet with disillusionment and ultimately tragedy. It is at this point however, that interpretative certainty becomes subordinate to Moffatt's particular gift for imbuing her work with a palpable sense of ambiguity, as issues of race, gender and narrative are introduced but recast in such a way as to thwart any single, definitive interpretation.
Moffatt plays the heroine, in a provocative turn that arouses questions regarding identity and autobiography. Unlike Cindy Sherman, whose self-casting is an integral part of the content of her work, in recorded interviews Moffatt has downplayed the significance of her role-playing. Intriguingly, her presence in Something More both authenticates and subverts the narrative. The artist is of half-aboriginal descent and in the first frame of the series there is the suggestion that the protagonist of Something More is of mixed parentage, through the blonde, 'white-trash' woman and the Aboriginal man who dwell sullenly in the shack. Thus Moffatt's casting of herself in this role has the interesting implication of slyly undercutting the pessimism of the narrative, for unlike the doomed heroine of Something More, Moffatt has undeniably pursued and achieved her dreams.
The role played by the other women in Something More is also
intriguing. The slovenly blonde who provides such a stark contrast to the fresh-faced dreamer in the first frame is apparently an example of someone who has accepted her lot in life and is desirous of neither change nor ambition. At the alternate end of the scale is the mysterious female motorcyclist, whose motorcycle suggests freedom and who wields the power of an aggressive sexuality and who may perhaps be the sinister cause behind the last image. While the entire range of the female spectrum is thus represented in Something More, it is unclear what the message regarding female power is and to what extent the viewer is being manipulated, for as Gael Newton perceptively noted: "The high camp melodrama of the bike image skates close to making the viewer suspect it is their own gullible appetite for melodrama and titillation which is being sent up." (A Newton and T Moffatt, op.cit., p. 17) Sex and violence are undeniably present but the extent to which they are entered into complicitly is unclear.
Nowhere is Moffatt's trademark ambiguity more in evidence than in her treatment of the narrative. The cinematic qualities of something More have already been commented on but as a photographic series it differs from cinema in one significant aspect in that it does not exist in a set, linear temporality. Moffatt employs the cinematic device of the 'jump-cut' as a disruptive strategy that therefore works against any but the most allusive of interpretative readings. Other visually disruptive devices include the constant visual switches between blurred and focussed imagery, and the use of both black and white and colour prints. In cinema, a switch from colour to black and white often operates as a visual signifier of a leap into the past or memory. It is typical of Moffatt's masterful manipulation of her media that she uses this cinematic device in a painterly way; for the switch to black and white appears less to do with temporal games and instead works on an emotive level, muting the violence inherent in two of the black and white images through their monochrome palette.
narrative, Something More takes the viewer on an provocative journey of artistic, thematic and technical sophistication. While meaning is elusive, it is precisely this quality of ambiguity that invests Moffatt's work with an intriguing intensity that ensures that the images continue to resonate with the power to captivate.
Recalling stills from a film, the narrative of Something More initially appears to tread a well-worn path. A young woman from an apparently rural and disadvantaged background dreams of a better life and sets forth on her journey of discovery, only to meet with disillusionment and ultimately tragedy. It is at this point however, that interpretative certainty becomes subordinate to Moffatt's particular gift for imbuing her work with a palpable sense of ambiguity, as issues of race, gender and narrative are introduced but recast in such a way as to thwart any single, definitive interpretation.
Moffatt plays the heroine, in a provocative turn that arouses questions regarding identity and autobiography. Unlike Cindy Sherman, whose self-casting is an integral part of the content of her work, in recorded interviews Moffatt has downplayed the significance of her role-playing. Intriguingly, her presence in Something More both authenticates and subverts the narrative. The artist is of half-aboriginal descent and in the first frame of the series there is the suggestion that the protagonist of Something More is of mixed parentage, through the blonde, 'white-trash' woman and the Aboriginal man who dwell sullenly in the shack. Thus Moffatt's casting of herself in this role has the interesting implication of slyly undercutting the pessimism of the narrative, for unlike the doomed heroine of Something More, Moffatt has undeniably pursued and achieved her dreams.
The role played by the other women in Something More is also
intriguing. The slovenly blonde who provides such a stark contrast to the fresh-faced dreamer in the first frame is apparently an example of someone who has accepted her lot in life and is desirous of neither change nor ambition. At the alternate end of the scale is the mysterious female motorcyclist, whose motorcycle suggests freedom and who wields the power of an aggressive sexuality and who may perhaps be the sinister cause behind the last image. While the entire range of the female spectrum is thus represented in Something More, it is unclear what the message regarding female power is and to what extent the viewer is being manipulated, for as Gael Newton perceptively noted: "The high camp melodrama of the bike image skates close to making the viewer suspect it is their own gullible appetite for melodrama and titillation which is being sent up." (A Newton and T Moffatt, op.cit., p. 17) Sex and violence are undeniably present but the extent to which they are entered into complicitly is unclear.
Nowhere is Moffatt's trademark ambiguity more in evidence than in her treatment of the narrative. The cinematic qualities of something More have already been commented on but as a photographic series it differs from cinema in one significant aspect in that it does not exist in a set, linear temporality. Moffatt employs the cinematic device of the 'jump-cut' as a disruptive strategy that therefore works against any but the most allusive of interpretative readings. Other visually disruptive devices include the constant visual switches between blurred and focussed imagery, and the use of both black and white and colour prints. In cinema, a switch from colour to black and white often operates as a visual signifier of a leap into the past or memory. It is typical of Moffatt's masterful manipulation of her media that she uses this cinematic device in a painterly way; for the switch to black and white appears less to do with temporal games and instead works on an emotive level, muting the violence inherent in two of the black and white images through their monochrome palette.
narrative, Something More takes the viewer on an provocative journey of artistic, thematic and technical sophistication. While meaning is elusive, it is precisely this quality of ambiguity that invests Moffatt's work with an intriguing intensity that ensures that the images continue to resonate with the power to captivate.