Tracey Moffatt is known to be 'controlling' but now she's letting go of all her work

When Tracey Moffatt was five years old, she won a children's art competition and was asked to donate her winning entry to the local children's hospital.

The problem was, it wasn't Moffatt's work.

"I stole the painting from a boy who was a better artist than I was," the award-winning artist tells ABC Radio National's Awaye!.

"In those days we'd make our paintings and put them outside on the concrete to dry in the sun," she says, thinking back to her childhood in the outer suburbs of Brisbane in the 1960s.

"I picked up Johnny's [painting] because he had run home. [My teacher] was so delighted with the picture. The next thing I know, it's entered in a child's painting competition and it won."

Moffatt is not proud of her "childhood shenanigans". In fact, she calls the request to donate the painting her "letter of shame".

Still, it proves even from a young age she had an eye for art.

"I knew what was good," Moffatt says.

And in time, she learned how to make good art herself, turning to photography and filmmaking due to what she describes as her "complete and total lack of the ability to paint or draw".

Sixty years after that painting escapade, Moffatt is being honoured with the acquisition of her entire archive by the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney, gifted by an anonymous donor. It includes an edition of every photographic work, film and video produced by Moffatt since 1985.

Creation not documentation

In photography and filmmaking, Moffatt found a true affinity for creating narratives through movement, sound, light and colour.

It resulted in some of the most recognisable and acclaimed works of contemporary Australian art, including the films Night Cries — A Rural Tragedy (1989) and BeDevil (1993), and the episodic photo series Something More (1989), Scarred for Life (1994) and Up in the Sky (1997).

Over her four-decade career, Moffatt's work has been recognised in acquisitions and exhibitions by major art institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim and Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Her films screened at Cannes Film Festival and in 2017 Moffatt represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, the first Aboriginal person to do so as a solo artist.

Moffatt's sustained focus on creating highly staged images is a deliberate rejection of the notion of capturing or documenting reality. Instead, she uses her extensive knowledge of early printing processes and cinematic history to create something entirely new.

"I know that [a piece] is working when I feel I haven't seen such an image before. If an image suddenly resonates with me, that's when I know. There's no formula," she says.

Sometimes the line between creativity and documentary feels razor thin, as in Moffatt's photographic series Up in the Sky (1997).

The collection of 25 stills invites viewers into a non-linear story set in an Australian outback town, where a young white woman and an Aboriginal baby appear to be separated by nuns.

While Moffatt is undoubtedly emulating a documentary look, the black and white stills from Up in the Sky are just as staged as technicolour vignettes in her best known series, Something More (1989).

"What's common in all of my work in film and video is storytelling and narrative. I've never been one to take the camera out on the street and capture. I'm not into capturing, I'm into creating," Moffatt says.

A rare assembly

The donation of Moffatt's archive to Chau Chak Wing Museum is the first of its kind in Australia, and will see an edition of every photograph, film and video she has put her hand to since 1985 housed "neat as a pin" in the museum's newly appointed Tracey Moffatt Archive room.

"I'm so honoured by the idea of my archive being held by Chau Chak Wing Museum for safe keeping and eventual display. An artist couldn't want for anything better," Moffatt says.

Moffatt also contributed a donation of her own, in the form of Andy Warhol-inspired "time capsules" of ephemera, test prints, newspaper clippings, old scripts and costumes, as well as personal photographs.

Coupled with the artworks, they create a rare assembly of an artist's creative output. Moffatt suspects the archive will entice the academics who've always been interested in her art.

"Students call me nonstop, and I'm studied not only here, but around the world. So this is a place where students can study if they're interested in my work," she says.

"It's also somewhere scholars that write about my work can come in and drag out framed pieces they might've missed out on previously."

'I'm happy to let it go'

In addition to masterpieces, the museum's Tracey Moffatt Archive is also home to "failed" test prints including a series of images set in a pioneer village. While she initially thought the series had potential, Moffatt has since changed her mind.

"I wanted an indistinct look, so I moved the camera when I shot this series, but as a result, nothing but blur. So in the end they didn't read well enough," she says.

Another set of photographs were deemed "awful" after she tried to put wax on them.

Moffatt ultimately titled the triptych Art That Does Not Work (2018) and agreed to have the pictures displayed in the Chau Chak Wing Museum's exhibition honouring the donation.

Art That Does Not Work hangs opposite the much more successful series Scarred For Life II (2000), which recreates moments of childhood tragedy and ignominy, such as being the only boy on the rugby team wearing a hand-knitted jersey, or being forced to cut the lawn with a pair of scissors, as a punishment.

"The museum is brilliant at display … I've been known to be quite controlling, but for this sort of thing, I'm happy to leave it to other people," Moffatt says.

Moving forward she has no intention of being involved in any of the curatorial decisions about how or when her archive is displayed, and will instead focus on making new works.

"I have commissions. I've got a big new piece I've made for the National Gallery. And then I have other commissions for next year, and I am working on a new photo series. So I've got a lot on my plate," she says.

There is one small caveat to Moffatt's hands-off approach. She's asked that the museum refrain from "a big Tracey Moffatt show" and instead look for creative ways to incorporate her series into themed exhibitions.

"It's all about letting go. Let it go and let it go. I've always been like this. My work has crossed borders. It's gone out into the world. I just have this thing of 'set it free'.

"I've made it, and I'm happy to let it go."

Tracey Moffatt Sorted is at Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney until August 2027.