ADELAIDE.- The Art Gallery of South Australia is presenting the first Australian display of Tracey Moffatt’s photographic series Body Remembers and video work Vigil, from her critically acclaimed 57th Venice Biennale exhibition, My Horizon.

Acclaimed as a ‘roaring success’ by art critic John McDonald, Body Remembers continues the artist’s poetic investigation of self and identity. The series of ten sepia toned black and white photographs revisit Moffatt’s earlier works, whereby the artist herself is cast as protagonist. Set in an arid landscape, Moffatt presents a sense of ‘nowhere space and time’ and recalls her personal and matrilineal history of domestic servitude.

Moffatt describes the series as ‘a play with time, backwards and forwards of the past and present’. In this statement she hints at the pervasive legacy of colonisation and its reverberations across time and place.

Screened nearby, Vigil is a two-minute film that juxtaposes imagery drawn from Hollywood films with imagery from the 2010 Christmas Island disaster in which a vessel carrying 90 asylum seekers sank off the North West coast of Australia. Moffatt has used montage to develop a sense of suspense, absurdity and chaos.

Tracey Moffatt is widely recognised and celebrated for her distinct aesthetic across photography and film, her enduring interrogation of Australia’s colonial history, and her approach in dismantling conventions of storytelling. She is considered one of Australia’s most successful artists both nationally and internationally.

Tracey Moffatt: Body Remembers runs from Saturday 14 July to Sunday 30 September at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Admission is free.