TRACEY MOFFAT

While she does not promote herself as an Aboriginal artist per se, Tracey Moffatt’s Aboriginal heritage ensures that she is included in the top 100 Aboriginal artists survey. She enjoys a very successful career through Roslyn Oxley’s representation in Australia and with works sold across a number of continents. However, her ranking amongst the most important Aboriginal artists of all time is principally due to the repeated sales of one particular photographic image created in 1991, as well as the most popular of those additional images in the same body of work.

Her photographs first appeared at auction in 2000 when three works were offered, of which two sold. The following year all 11 works offered found new homes and this spectacularly continued into 2002 when 17 of 21 works were successful. By this time her clearance rate was a very impressive 86%, which dropped slightly to 83% at the end of 2003. While her career record price was reached the following year when a suite of six Cibachrome prints from the Something More series and three black and white photographs sold for $227,050, her secondary market results have been on a downward spiral ever since. Throughout the 2010s, only about a third of the works offered have managed to sell.

Moffatt's top 30 results at auction almost all consist of the same images from her Something More series. Unfortunately for Moffatt, the secondary market, in Australia at least, has considered her a one-trick pony. Little wonder she has refused auction houses’ copyright over this ubiquitous image in order to avoid being stereotyped. Nevertheless, Moffatt can hardly avoid it. Even Baz Lurhman, in his epic movie Australia, couldn’t resist dressing Nicole Kidman in a Cheongsam with a weatherboard backdrop as a homage.

All this must be the stuff of nightmares for Moffatt, who is a very fine artist. She is equally at home with prints and graphics as she is with photography. Her inclusion in important international exhibitions and the range of work she produces is likely to continue well into the future, and this should, in time, round out her auction results. One thing is definite, however. Tracey Moffatt’s work is more worthy than her auction results indicate. Collectors would be well advised to delve deeper into her oeuvre. Her Up In The Sky series, created in 1997, Scarred for Life 1994, and Some Boys are good examples of works very much worth collecting, especially given their currently reasonable prices.