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Lip and Love: Subversive Repetition in the Pastiche Films of Tracey Moffatt

This article investigates Australian artist Tracey Moffatt’s use of composite pastiche as a subversive strategy to destabilise classical cinematic myths of womanhood. It argues that art’s recent fascination with cinema constitutes more than a borrowing of seductive spectacle and can, in fact, be better explained as a ‘complicitious critique’ that repoliticises cinematic stereotypes. Moreover, it challenges the popular view of pastiche as an uncritical art strategy. The principal research activities for this paper involved conducting literature surveys on four key areas: Moffatt’s art practice, theories of pastiche, postcolonial theory and feminist film theory as well as conducting close textual analysis of Moffatt’s films. While it discusses artists’ films, this paper is situated within a film studies research context, a strategy adopted to illuminate the criticality of this cinematically engaged art practice. The preliminary findings of this research were presented to a group of expert academic researchers, as part of a pre-constituted panel, at the Screen conference in 2007. The success of this panel prompted an invitation by the Screen editors to submit a special dossier on women experimental filmmakers of which this essay forms part. Disseminating my conclusions through the internationally outstanding, peer-reviewed Screen journal enhances my potential contribution to research on the criticality of pastiche and on postcolonial issues in contemporary artists’ films; my essay has been cited in a number of peer-reviewed journal articles. I have maintained close research links with the other dossier writers as we continue to develop collaborative projects e.g. a panel on artist-directed feature films at the Framing Film conference, University of Winchester 2009; conference session convening on The Discursive Space of Artists’ Films at AAH conference 2010; and a joint panel on Feminist Authorship and Film, MeCCSA conference, 2013.