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Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. Since 1989 her photographic, film and video works have been shown in major museums around the world.

Her work explores themes of oppression, hysteria and forms of escape. Two Rooms will be exhibiting her latest work, First Jobs, Series 2008. This photographic suite evokes the memories of those lackluster, mundane jobs we were obliged to do as teenagers and art students in order to survive. Now permeated with bright bubblegum colours, Tracey Moffatt revisits her work places with cheerful irony. Comparing her existence now as an artist with her work in those past jobs.

Moffatt explains “When I think of those early years I realize that I was learning to be tough and work whether I liked it or not. I put my head down and was forced to be productive”… “Being an artist feels like being on a permanent but jittery holiday in comparison to those early working days”.

In addition, Two Rooms will show a selection of Moffatt’s filmic montages from 1999 to 2008, edited by Gary Hilberg. Included is Revolution 2008, created for the last Sydney Biennale. A seamless, rhythmic composition using excerpts from well known, and B grade movies, this work explores the stereotypes of revolution in movies and the chaos that ensues.

Tracey Moffatt
First Jobs Series 2008
Selected Films by Tracey Moffatt, edited by Gary Hilberg
Films: Revolution 2008 Doomed 2007 Love 2003 Artist 2000 Lip 1999
16 April – 16 May 2009

Image: First Jobs, Pineapple Cannery 1978 2008
Archival pigments on rice paper with gel medium 71 × 91.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

• Murray Green

Two Rooms is pleased to present new paintings by Murray Green. His role as artist encompasses the skills of chemist, craftsman and inventor. His works begin as exquisitely crafted panels using an array of unorthodox painting materials such as urethanes and polyester resins, combined with his personal critique on traditional painting methods. Green makes an inventory of brush marks, blobs and drips, which he expertly suspends into a richly coloured translucent sheet of resin.

The surface is pristine, smooth and waxy and but seething underneath is a viscous oozing surprise. Just as the materials are spilling out of their skin, the works bubble and brim with humour and contradiction. The paintings are at once both liquid and brittle. Have they emerged from the kitchen or science laboratory? are we looking at sugar candy or toxic bloom?

His new works also reference the fundamentals of making a painting; both the brushstroke and the properties of paint. He meticulously reconstructs the brushmark as simulacra, it becomes the object of desire encased in poured resin. Through artificial simulation and a little alchemy he captures the beauty of wet paint and the essence of its action, with that elusive moment just before flowing paint solidifies, frozen in time.

Murray Green has been exhibited at Two Rooms in Crosstalk 2008 and Painting One in 2007 and is now represented in the Wallace Collection as well as private collections in New Zealand and USA.

Murray Green
Hook Line and Sinker 2009
16 April – 16 May 2009

Image: Larconica 2009
280 x 498 mm
polyester resin on board