MEDIA KIT - Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government

THE MEKONG ARTISTS (CONTINUED)
VANDY RATTANA
b.1980 Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Lives and works in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Vandy Rattana is a self-taught photographer who has shown in numerous exhibitions and has worked as a
photojournalist for the Phnom Penh Post. He has experimented in a range of photographic styles, from
experimental abstraction to a documentary format that offsets the clichéd images of Cambodia as the land of
monks, temples and beggars. Vandy is active in the development of contemporary art and photography in
Cambodia and is one of the founders of Sa Sa Gallery in Phnom Penh, the country’s first artist-run space. His
choice of subject matter reflects his daily experience, and his photographs are known for their strong
composition, compelling narrative, and subtle commentary on Cambodian life and culture. From street scenes
to urban developments, Angkor tourists to intimate domestic settings, Vandy’s photographs trace the flows of
everyday life in a country that is undergoing profound transformation. APT6 will feature his series ‘Fire of the
Year’, which documents one of Phnom Penh’s frequent fires, here in the district of Dteuk Tlah (‘clear water’), a
community of stilted houses built over a lake full of plastic waste.
Exhibitions (group): ‘Forever Until Now: Contemporary Art from Cambodia’, 10 Chancery Lane, Hong Kong,
2009; ‘Strategies from Within’, Ke Center, Shanghai, China, 2008; ‘Another Asia’, 13th Noorderlicht
International Photofestival, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, 2006.
TRACEY MOFFATT
b.1960 Brisbane, Australia
Lives and works in New York, United States, and Sunshine Coast, Australia
One of Australia’s most prominent contemporary artists, Tracey Moffatt works in photography, video and film. She
graduated from the Queensland College of Art’s Film and Video course in 1982 and, since her first solo exhibition in
1989, has maintained a high profile as one of the key Australian artists working across issues of identity and gender,
especially in relation to Aboriginal Australia. Witty, sensual and subversive, her major photographic suites consist of
complex images of characters and locales that allow her to consider desire, provinciality, race, and the longing for
escape from social constraint. Moffatt employs every kind of artifice — using models, actors, make up, costume, and
painted and digitised backgrounds — to create a heightened sense of tension and mystery; yet characteristically her
works do not permit a simple resolution to their intriguing narratives. Moffatt's visual repertoire is rich, sourced
principally from popular cultural forms such as film, photography, television and mass-produced publications. With
considerable panache, she mines these sources to prod collective memories, creating ‘stories’ that appear to be
already known. Moffatt’s often light-hearted tone does not, however, blind observers to the seriousness of purpose that
is the key to her playful, intelligent and immensely enjoyable work. For APT6 Tracey Moffatt is showing two new works.
Plantation, a suite of 12 photographic diptychs printed in colour on handmade paper, pictures mysterious events set in
gorgeous tropical locales, with evident tensions that could resonate across many cultures. Other, a funny, dramatic
and sexy six-minute montage compilation DVD, riffs on the ways ‘the native’ has been portrayed in cinema.
Exhibitions: (solo): Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2008; Location One, New York, USA, 2008; Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts, Canada, 2005; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2003-04. Exhibitions: (group): Biennale
of Sydney, 2008; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 2008; Liverpool Biennial, UK, 2008; Sharjah Biennial, UAE,
2005.