A letter from Tracey Moffatt to Lynne Cooke, curator of Dia Center for the Arts, New York, in advance of her show "Free Falling"Fall 1997
Dear Lynne,Making art is quite therapeutic, like chopping vegetables, it calms me and keeps me off the streets. If I wasn't making photographs or films I would be going around slashing car tires with a butcher's knife.
It's not that I am a violent person (though I have secretly willed the occasional person to trip down a stairs), it's just that the anger builds up so badly that if I don't do something to take my mind off it like "work shopping" it through the making of artistic images then LOOK OUT!
I think thank god that I always work with "a crew" when I go out and make images. Even when I make my photographs I have "a team" -- a safety net around me. They keep an eye on me.
I'm the one who is in control though -- completely dictatorial but never mean to work with. I've found the best way to get what I want is through laughter. Especially when I run up to people in the streets and beg them to be in my photographs and "art films" I say: "Excuse me, look I'm not a weirdo okay I'm an artist, I need you, I'll give you fifty bucks if you do it -- oh and it's not porno."
Before you know it I've got them chuckling away and ringing me every day to know when the shoot is on and asking if their mothers can come and watch.
I've very excited about having a show at Dia Center for the Arts thanks Lynne for hauling me out of the ghetto and discovering me. The thought of having my work showcased in New York City for nine months is a dream come true.
The other day this older artist I know made a niggardly comment about me having the show. I could tell he was baffled as to why my work was being given a platform and me being still not so old. It was words to the effect of "who would have thought it would happen." Like it was all such a big surprise that out of the blue I made something that would attract some attention.
Then I thought about how he works or about how "little" he works at his own art -- how it has never advanced. How he never reads about art or artists or even goes and sees anyone else's shows -- so caught up in his own "genius." Scared to take in anything new out of fear of being tainted -- a fear of not being completely original.
This person has never realized that the most interesting artists have always had a keen awareness of history and of what was going on around them -- borrowing from this and that and admitting to outside influences. For example I love how Martin Scorsese constantly references other film directors and films. You see him in interviews revelling in his love and knowledge of cinema. Then you look at his films and see the power and originality.
I also like to do my homework, though it is never work I should just call it "joy." Sometimes it's all I ever do, I'm constantly in a book shop or chasing some obscure film.
Once a friend saw me sitting on the floor in a local library staring at a child's picture book for a long time -- I was very embarrassed.
Each year I seem to take on an obsession with an artist, you can trace this in my book shelf. I adore biography and usually of a woman artist.
For example, in 1984 it would have been Zora Neale Hurston, in 1985 Diane Arbus, in 1986 Frida Kahlo, in 1987 Anaïs Nin, in 1988 Pauline Kael, in 1989 Carson McCullers, in 1992 Maya Deren, in 1993 Anne Sexton, in 1994 Georgia O'Keeffe, in 1995 Leni Riefenstahl, and lately it has been the turn-of-the-century Californian pictorialist photographer Anne Brigman.
Anne Brigman made exquisite scratchy platinum prints of her nude self and other women posed in twisted up trees in the Sierra Mountains. Anne was so "counterculture" so caught up in beliefs of "free love" and of mystical ties to nature -- she was in a sense a early hippy artist. Isadora Duncan would have been her dance-world equivalent.
Anne once described her photographs as "the partially realized fancies that flourished in the golden or thunderous days of two months in a wild part of the Sierras where gnomes and elves and spirits of the trees reveal themselves under certain mystical incantations." In 1908 Annie must have thought that this was a cool way of describing her art.
Unfortunately, Lynne, I don't want to even try to describe the work I have produced for our show "Free-falling" -- see how I call it "work," I can't even bring myself to call it "art" (it's an Australian hang up) I am still too close to it, I will leave it up to you.
I am pleased that you have chosen four works which have been produced over a seven year period. the three media of film, video, and photography. I'm not sure if there are connections in the pieces, maybe.
I'm happy with our title "Free-falling" -- falling through the air free from guidance or restraint. It does combine like you say "both danger and wonder, something unfettered and marvellous with something risky and even violent" All the best things as far as I'm concerned.
Best Wishes,
Tracey Moffatt