Indigenous Artist Archie Moore’s kith and kin was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for Best National Participation at La Biennale de Venezia 2024. This is the first time in history an Australian artist has received this accolade. It is on exhibition in the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane until 18 October 2026.
It is an extraordinary and audacious work of art that inspires reverence and quiet reflection. Entering the darkened exhibition space, one is surrounded by a genealogical chart of the artist’s maternal Kamilaroi and Bigambul ancestors spanning 65,000 years. Moore also traces his paternal ties to convicts, linking himself to the British prison system that founded the Australian state with penal colonies from 1788. The names and family lines are written in white chalk on black walls speaking to the fragility of life.
The centre of the exhibition space is filled with a still water pool over which are stacked the 557 coronial inquests reports into Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991. It is a shocking reflection that captures the appalling fact that Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated people on the planet. The neatly stacked piles of paper belie the grief and gaps in the family tree lines; a rupture begun with the arrival of the British and continues a sundering of a way of life into the present.
This is an expansive work that conveys the truth of human interconnectedness; as past, present and future meld together in the flow of time. The artwork says to us: this is how it was and how it is. How it will be in the future is open to our action today.
– David Rose