Artist
First Jobs
Tracy Moffatt made me laugh hard and cry softly in this fantastic show at Artpace last month entitled Handmade. There were four video works projected on four walls, each taking a turn so that you would have to traverse each side of the deep and wide bench in the center of the room. The videos pieced together clips from famous films/TV spanning throughout film/TV history and were tightly edited together into four broad themes. Artist was packed with hilarious scenes of production and destruction of artworks on screen, particularly painting. The angst of the artist was so palpable it was embarrassing! Love, another video montage, broke my heart with scenes of kissing, fighting, hurting and loving all rolling by like the view from a train, with just enough information to grasp the heartache.
The rest of the gallery space was dedicated to a series of bright and oddly enthusiastic photographic collages depicting scenes of entry-level employment. I could relate to a number of them, as they seemed to be set in the 1980's (the beginning of my working life), and because I have had a plethora of shitty jobs in my day. The waitress scene is uncannily similar to my memory of Mickel's Family Restaurant. Mickel's was my first job as a waitress, where a tip of a quarter was not uncommon. They were famous for their deep fat fried dinner rolls. Yes, you read that correctly. And, I'm pretty sure they're still frying.
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