Review of Art Exhibition

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20.04.2024 - 24.11.2024 'Kith and Kin' by Archie Moore, Australian Pavillion, Biennale di Venezia

Larger image in new window. View across the rooftops of Venice, 2024Walking into the Australian Pavillion at the Biennale, after wading through tourists and after days of exploring a thousand years of Venetian dominance and wealth, which is now sinking slowly into the lagoon, is surreal.

There are, in my humble opinion, many Indigenous artworks that are more instantly appealing than the installation Archie Moorie created for the Australian Pavillion. His work, however, stands out in its stark demarcation of the black/white divide and in its austere elegance. White chalked texts on black walls label past Indigenous people, his ancestors - not with their own names but with bastardized versions or random names or none - showing the superficial White dominance over Indigenous lives. The names run up the walls and flow over onto the ceiling, growing fainter but not disappearing.

Larger image in new window. Exhibition view of artwork 'Kith and Kin' by Archie Moore, Biennale di Venezia, 2024Intruding into this large space, dozens of stacks of white paper are arranged in geometrical precision on a floating square table in the centre of the room, each representing a Report of a Royal Commission or other government investigation into deaths in custody or the social injustices that put huge numbers of Indigenous people into prisons. The titles are hard to read, and - appropriately - the stacks are often made of blank white pages, symbolising their secret/confidential nature … or perhaps their impact. The table seems to float in or above a mirroring pool, and the first impression is of pristine disconnection from the black reality on the walls.

Larger image in new window. Exhibition view of artwork 'Kith and Kin' by Archie Moore, Biennale di Venezia, 2024There are two major gaps in the ancestral genealogy shown on the walls; one directly opposite the entrance. An attendant on-site, when asked, said they represent a gap in the records. Archie Moore, however, wrote that 'holes occur in the lineage, signalling the severing of families through massacres, diseases and the deliberate destruction of records'. [www.kithandkin.me/concept]

Walking inside, from the bright outdoors, feels like entering a dark cave. The table with reports stands out starkly, so the writings on the walls only gradually resolve. Finally, the history of lineage dominates as one turns one’s back on the government reports. Two world-views stand in opposition: the civilized, orderly, bureaucratic, genocidal and euphemistic world of colonialism versus the human, familial, living world where what counts are lives and loves.

Studying the hand-written names, and mis-namings, walking along and along, the weight of lives and deaths presses down. Some artworks invite introspection; some artworks demand analysis; this artwork enforces them. One wishes for some ray of light and hope, some sign of rebirth, but the only hint of hope is the message 'we endure. we are more than you can know.'

Archie Moore himself, and several Indigenous curators, provide 15-20 minute discourses on the artwork here: www.kithandkin.me/discourse

Archie Moore's work won the Golden Lion Award for Best Pavilion of the Biennale.