Peter Turner Memorial Lecture: Tracey Moffatt

6.30–8pm (Doors open 6.15pm), followed by refreshments

Free entry, bookings required

In this lecture Australian artist Tracey Moffatt will discuss her practice as an image maker. Working predominantly in photography and film for over three decades, Moffatt is known as a powerful visual storyteller. Narrative is often implied and self-referential in her work, exploring her own childhood memories alongside broader issues of race, gender, sexuality and identity. In this lecture Tracey will discuss current art projects, her methods of working and how she is influenced by everything and nothing.

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s most renowned contemporary artists. Moffatt has held over 100 solo exhibitions of her work in Europe, the United States and Australia. Her films, including Nightcries – A Rural Tragedy (1989), and beDevil (1993), have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the Dia Centre for the Arts in New York and the National Centre for Photography in Paris. Moffatt represented Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017 with her solo exhibition MY HORIZON in the Australian Pavilion, curated by Natalie King. Moffatt has exhibited in numerous national and international art exhibitions and film festivals for three decades. In 2012, a retrospective programme of her films was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has exhibited at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Guggenheim Museum and in 2007 she was awarded the prestigious Infinity Award for art photography, selected by an International panel at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Whiti o Rehua School of Art Massey University in partnership with Te Papa Tongarewa is pleased to present this year’s Peter Turner Memorial Lecture. This year’s lecture is presented as the start of the Photobook/NZ festival, 7-9 August. Please see www.photobooknz.com/programme for details and links to events over the weekend.

The Peter Turner Memorial Lecture in Photography was established in 2008, in the memory of the late Peter Turner historian, curator and former editor of Creative Camera magazine who came from the UK to live in NZ in 1981. His contributions to the medium of photography during his time in New Zealand spanned curatorial work, writing, reviewing and teaching. He is remembered for his passion for the medium, support of photographers and their work and his special love of practices he termed lyric, transcendent or poetic documentary photography. Founded on reflections on this legacy the annual Peter Turner Lecture is conceived as a means to broaden discussions about the social and cultural value of the medium of photography today – as an expanded field inclusive of a broad range of lens based media and approaches.

In association with the Peter Turner Lecture a fund has been established by the Massey University Foundation to support the Peter Turner Scholarship that was launched in association with the lecture and each year provides a postgraduate student scholarship for a student engaging with social and cultural issues through the medium of photography in its broadest sense.

The Peter Turner Fund has been established by the Massey University Foundation to grow the support this scholarship can offer young photographers aspiring for a career the lens based arts.