Artist Tracey Moffatt
Designer Anita Gigi Budai
Commissioner Naomi Milgorm
Curator Natalie King
Photographer John Gollings

 INTERVIEW
by Timothy Moore, Sibling Architecture

 Curator Natalie King and artist Tracey Moffatt have strong visions about their work. What was their brief, and how did you transform this vision with the exhibition design?

Intimacy, ambience, a dream-like state, enclosure - these were the themes I was asked to explore for the design of Tracey Moffatt’s My Horizon for the biennale. Moffatt revealed visual cues and her thought patterns to me while King provided poetic descriptions.

Using their guidance, the central room housing Passage was envisaged as a jewel box: a partially enclosed space for this series of twelve framed colour photographs that are operatic and cinematic. From here the rest of the works radiate in a horizontal format - much like a film strip, an architectural frieze and the horizon that is key to Moffatt’s work (that’s reflected in her exhibition title).

The exhibition is an incredibly cinematic experience of stills and reels. How did you morph the large interior into something more contextual and distinct to Moffatt’s work?

The design uses a series of curved portals to set the scene and directs the gaze onto the next series. The intent was to break away from the cubic structure of the space and the all-white interior, to soften the edges and create a layered tableau.

This, along with the dark grey-washed walls, heighten the mood. Why did you avoid the blackbox?

We went through almost twenty variations of the design eventually realising that a black box cinema projection of the large format work of The White Ghosts Sailed In would not work. By creating the central jewel box we could define a screening zone for the 4m wide projection adjacent to Passage.

We covered the window and reduced the opening to the gallery to minimise the amount of light entering the space and repeated the curved doorways as a motif - part ship portal, part feminine in form - it helped to separate the internal structure from the architecture of the building and fitted in with the shadowy, otherworldly imagery of Moffatt’s imagery.

Over 500,000 people visit the Venice Art Bienniale with the majority being well-informed art lovers, dealers, collectors, artists and hanger-ons. Most of this crowd is looking for something memorable, or at the least, instagrammable. How did you consider the demands of the audience against the artist?

There are a series of moments: Elizabeth Taylor peering down from the pavilion exterior, consecutive apertures, a glistening jewel box, a frieze of large scaled sepia toned photographs floating in the darkness, the flickering of film, detail upon detail as you delve deeper into the imagery of Moffatt’s work. These are moments that I think the visitor can record, post and take away as a memory. It is a fine balance between audience interest and the vision of the artist. As a designer it is key to be open to both and ultimately devise a space that reflects the imagination and beauty of the artworks.