Tracey Moffatt’s Vigil splices news footage with glossy Hollywood film clips, juxtaposing a real 2010 maritime disaster that claimed the lives of 50 asylum seekers with images of famous actors looking out of windows with horror. While the artwork responds to Australia’s policies against people arriving by boat to seek asylum, the artist also aims to speak more broadly to the global refugee crisis. Vigil queries disparities between emotive response and political action and probes the ways privilege and race intersect in contemporary society.