Queensland artist Archie Moore (Kamilaroi/Bigambul people) and Ellie Buttrose, Curator of Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA, have been selected as the artist and curator for Australia’s representation at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (Biennale Arte) in 2024.
We are thrilled about the recent announcement made by the Australia Council, the Commissioner and producer for the Australia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where Moore’s major new project curated by Buttrose will be presented within the historic Giardini della Biennale precinct.
Following its international showing Moore’s presentation at the Venice Biennale will tour to QAGOMA. Moore’s generous and productive approach to storytelling about the impact of Australia’s colonial and post-colonial project on Australia’s First Nations peoples is well deserving of international recognition.
Queensland’s representation of Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2024 reinforces the talent of our artists and arts workers and places a prominent First Nations artist at the centre of the global contemporary art scene.
Ellie Buttrose is a longstanding member of the curatorial department at QAGOMA. She has been part of the Gallery’s curatorial team on the flagship Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art series of exhibitions since 2015; and has curated many QAGOMA exhibitions and cinema programs.
Born in 1970, Archie Moore lives and works in Redlands. He works across a range of media and is well-known for his research-driven practice that often combines historical examinations with personal reflections to address the lived experience of Indigenous Australians.
From 13 August 2022 to 22 January 2023 QAGOMA presented Moore’s major commission Inert State 2022 (illustrated) in the exhibition ‘Embodied Knowledge: Queensland Contemporary Art’ co-curated by Buttrose and QAGOMA’s Curator of Indigenous Australian Art, Katina Davidson. The installation, presented in the Queensland Art Gallery’s Watermall, comprised Parliamentary proceedings and coroner’s reports and reflected on the 30th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 1987-1991 and the need for institutional change.
With support of QAGOMA’s Future Collective through the QAGOMA Foundation, Moore’s United Neytions 2014/2017 is proposed for acquisition into the Gallery’s Collection. Simple in their designs but complicated by the politics of their iconography, these ‘false flags’ present a powerful and compelling contribution to the discourse around national and cultural symbols in Australia.
‘United Neytions joins a series of artworks entitled On a Mission from God 2012 by Moore in the QAGOMA Collection, which reconstruct nine important mission churches from Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reserves from the pages of miniature bibles. These artworks examine the supporting role these churches played in the government’s control and assimilation of Indigenous Australian people and in the destruction of culture.
Featured image: Archie Moore testing Inert State 2022, photograph: Chloë Callistemon © QAGOMA / Ellie Buttrose, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA, photograph: Joe Ruckli © QAGOMA
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