“. . . art is not separate to life.”
For good reason, everyone is talking about Archie Moore at Venice. Presenting Australia at the 60th La Biennale di Venezia, the Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist is the first Australian to win the Golden Lion – the top award. Until November, his exhibition kith and kin makes sovereign Indigenous voices heard on the global stage with a focus on the resilient interconnection between people, place and time.
kith and kin has a prime spot in the Giardini, the Biennale’s parkland. Seen from a bridge on sunny days, Australia’s contemporary waterside pavilion looks like it’s straight out of Sydney. Yet, it takes time to find within the greenery. Distanced from the buzz and likely arriving at a queue, invigilators tell attendees that the exhibition is a memorial. Within, the only source of light besides a small window often fades as the entrance door opens and closes. Visitors need to adjust their eyes. As exhibition curator Ellie Buttrose tells Art Almanac, “It was vital for the exhibition to slow people down, encourage them to linger and to signal that art is not separate to life.”
Archie Moore, kith and kin, 2024, Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Photograph: Andrea Rossetti. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney
The exhibition orientates around the “everywhen,” a circular time concept common to Indigenous cultures. Over blackboard walls, Moore used white chalk to chart his lineage across 65,000 years – the time Indigenous cultures have occupied the Australian continent. Factual (3,000 plus ancestors Moore found across his Kamilaroi, Bigambul, British and Scottish heritage), speculative and symbolic names gesture to the continuity of Indigenous culture and the scope of humanity’s shared ancestry. In addition, Moore’s choice to use derogatory terms in the chart reveals cultural conflicts or other truths through language. Two “half-blood” children born to “full-blood” parents rejects ideas of Western familial structures – family does not always equal biology.
Names spill onto the ceiling like a celestial chart; for Kamilaroi people, one’s final resting place is between the stars. They taper off before two lit squares above dark shrine-like water that distances viewers from a central table holding 500 piled governmental and other public records. Walking around and leaning in, phrases can be made out: coroner’s report, inquest into death, hanging. The gap furthers Moore’s act of presenting family histories without ostracisation – shown with their consent and names blacked out – while the archival mass is a pointed statement to the magnitude of Indigenous deaths in custody.
Archie Moore, kith and kin, 2024, Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Photograph: Andrea Rossetti. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney
Moore’s layered meaning becomes more intricate in dialogue with other exhibitions with migrant or colonial narratives in response to the Biennale’s theme ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ (despite many pavilions giving way to climate themes or practising gymnastics to present whatever they want). For instance, Jeffrey Gibson’s technicolour celebration of Indigenous queerness at the USA Pavilion has a joyous juxtaposition to Moore’s monochromatic sombreness. Likewise, family memories pining for land lost (Mexico’s Erick Meyenberg) and a theatrical historical anti-colonial uprising (Egypt’s Wael Shawky) also head into the subjective margins of time like Moore’s “everywhen.”
In the context of Venice, though, Australia is further than these countries with their more familiar sociopolitics. How might Euro-dominant crowds, with a mixed awareness of Indigenous Australian knowledge and trauma, respond? Buttrose says that while hinged on Moore’s family, kith and kin has a cross-cultural relevance, including – unfortunately, she says – the destruction of family ties and cultural records due to war or incarceration of vulnerable communities. The Australian-plucked mediation-trained invigilation team are also ready for both intro and deeper conversations wherever visitors are at.
Buttrose also shared that the “artwork emphasises our connection and responsibilities to each other rather than differences,” and Moore has dedicated the exhibition to all living things. With tenderness and detail, as a segment of the world keenly watches from Italy, he threads belonging between everyone, everything, everywhen.
Tahney Fosdike is a writer from the Murraylands, South Australia, now living in Paris.
Archie Moore: kith and kin
Australia Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia
20 April to 24 November 2024
Italy
Following the exhibition in the Australia Pavilion, the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, will present kith and kin as part of its 2025–26 program.
