MIAMI, FLA.- The Bass Museum of Art is presenting a selection of video works from the museum’s collection titled Montages: The Full Cut, 1999-2015, a collection of eight films by artist Tracey Moffatt and her long-time collaborator Gary Hillberg. Shown for the first time in the digital sphere, The Bass is exhibiting the works in its virtual gallery space called The Bass2 (@TheBassSquared). Exclusively via Instagram, @TheBassSquared began in 2019 thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation in an effort to make more digital art accessible online.
The films boldly survey the nature of representation and genres of cinema. Created over a sixteen-year period, Montages deconstruct stereotypes within Hollywood films and television, creating new narratives and character conventions. With their quick, sometimes jarring transitions, the films create highly charged compositions on subjects such as Aboriginal subjugation, maternal domination, sexism and classism. The works are part of The Bass’ collection, acquired in 2018 thanks to a generous donation from the artist in honor of Cricket and Marty Taplin.
Montages: The Full Cut, 1999-2015 features Lip (1999), Artist (2000), Love (2003), Doomed (2007), Revolution (2008), Mother (2009), Other (2010), and The Art (2015). Lip is an investigative history of race relations between black female domestic workers and their white bosses as portrayed in cinema. Artist portrays artists and their tempestuous whims based on the clichés of Hollywood. Love is a compilation of love scenes from various films throughout time in which Moffatt uses as a commentary on the depiction of romance and intimacy in Hollywood, exposing darker themes of co-dependency and violence against women throughout this film. Doomed explores the cinematic portrayals of doomsday scenarios by bringing together a series of unrelated scenes to show that the globalization of fear can be forced upon us by social, cultural and emotional influences. Revolution confronts social power, structure and the struggles of the class system by exploring stereotypes found in Hollywood’s genre of movies about revolutions.
Mother is a virtual link between mother and child, depicting various archetypal maternal characters from films and television dramas that negotiate ideas of care, loss, emotional manipulation, abandonment and grief. Other (2010) is a series of interracial encounters in cinema, deconstructing the mix of desire and fear that defines the treatment of the omnipresent ‘other.’ The Art (2015) presents a playfully constructed series of the deconstruction and desecration of art by exploring the representation of creative processes onscreen.
Tracey Moffatt: Montages: The Full Cut, 1999-2015 launched on April 8, 2020 @TheBassSquared on Instagram.
Tracey Moffatt (b. 1960, Brisbane) is an Australian filmmaker, video artist, and photographer. Her work references her own childhood memories and fantasies, exploring issues of childhood trauma, Aboriginal people, and Australian media. In 1982, she received a BA in Visual Communications from Queensland College of Art, and in 1989 had her first solo show at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney. Moffatt was selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 1990 and 1993, and was chosen to show her work for the Venice Biennale in 1997. She has since extensively exhibited in museums all over the world and has her work in collections of numerous galleries and private collections.
