First Jobs, Canteen 1984, 2008
©
All rights reserved
Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney 2009 Australia
Archival pigments on rice paper with gel medium
71 × 91.5cm
FIRST JOBS
TRACEY MOFFATT
Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)
Friday 07 August 2009 to Sunday 27 September 2009
Opening Thursday 06 August 2009 6–8PM
Exhibition
previously on
at
Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)
in
Fitzroy-Collingwood precinct,
Victoria,
Australia
Tracey Moffatt's series First Jobs is a nostalgic portrayal of the jobs she worked as a teenager and student to obtain the kind of freedom that could only be achieved through a regular salary.
“The thing about making a bit of your own cash was that you could buy your own clothes and not have to wear the clothes that your mother picked out.”¹ Mind-numbing and backbreaking labour, working in factories, peeling pineapples, packing meat and washing hair in a salon resulted in Moffatt’s ticket to Europe in the late seventies. Hours of scrubbing floors or washing dishes allowed time for the imagination to run wild, and made ‘knock-off time’ all the more rewarding. Working hard at these tedious jobs however, was character building, and in Moffatt’s case, eventually led her to the life she now enjoys as a full-time artist, a job she explains that has no ‘knock-off time’.
¹ Tracey Moffatt, from the artist statement for First Jobs, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery 2008
FREE ARTIST FLOOR TALKS
SATURDAY 8 AUGUST 2009 , 12PM
Join artists Clare Rae, Georgia Metaxas, Simon O’Dwyer, Andrew Quilty, Laki Sideris, Leah Robertson, Anne Ferran and Emil Toonen
Location
Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)404 George Street
Fitzroy-Collingwood Precinct
Victoria
Australia
