Footnotes

• PROVENANCE
  Private collection, Melbourne
  
  LITERATURE
  John McDonald, 'Challenging dislocations' in The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 2 September 1989
  Gael Newton, Tracey Moffatt: Fever Pitch, Piper Press, Sydney, 1995, pp. 52-53 (illus., another example)
  Michael Snelling, Tracey Moffatt, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1999, p. 57 (illus., another example)
  P. Savage, & L. Strongman, Tracey Moffatt, City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand, 2002, p.24-26 (illus., another example)
  
  RELATED WORK
  Other examples from this edition are held in numerous Australia public collections.
  
  
  Currently on exhibit as Australia's representative for the 2017 Venice Biennale, it is impossible to conceive of contemporary Australian art without the work of Tracey Moffatt. A leading force in contemporary photography for over three decades, Moffatt's Something More series was first shown in 1989 as part of the artist's first solo exhibition. Held at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, the series has since become embedded in the lexicon of urban Indigenous art practice. As noted by curator Gael Newton 'Something More instantly established Moffatt's presence. and its surreal and exaggerated spaces became her signature style.'1.
  
  Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and caustic in the series, Something More No 8 encourages certain finite cultural readings regarding subjugation and the inherent sadomasochism of colonialism. The prostrate figure, played by the artist herself, presses her hands into the red dust whilst an unknown female presents us with a stock whip, the leather glossy as a serpent against the black sheen of her boots.
  
  The image succinctly highlights Moffatt's ability to draw inspiration from high art as well as mass entertainment. Firmly enmeshed within the form and stylistic language of television, film and media culture, much of the artists' work is based upon reveries from 'a whole 1960s childhood and 1970s adolescence (spent) glued to the television or with my nose in a book.'2
  
  Moffatt's practice takes us well beyond the retrospections of an introverted youth. Her complex fragmentations of the narrative arc, so deftly executed in Something More, leave the viewer to wonder at the unknown 'in between' events which populate her work. The allegory presented here is strangely recognisable; half memory, half echo of a violent past that is uncomfortable to look at directly. Through the compelling lushness of her images, Moffatt plays to the anticipation that is generated between desire and fulfilment, she provides both release and succour, though 'it is a pleasure always attended by a feeling of unease.'3
  
  1. Gael Newton, Tracey Moffatt, Invocations, The Australian National University, 2001, p. 12
  2. The artist quoted in Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, p. 262
  3. M. Wallace, 'Tracey Moffatt's visual pleasures', in Brought to Light II, Contemporary Australian Art 1966–2006 from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, Queensland Art Gallery Publishing, Brisbane, 2007, p. 309