Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore has won a prestigious international award for his work “kith and kin”.
Moore’s work is a genealogical chart tracing his ancestry and family lines back 65,000 years.
Moore is the first Australian artist to win the top award at the 2024 Venice Biennale, where different countries showcase their artists. The exhibit was curated by Ellie Buttrose and commissioned by the national arts body, Creative Australia.
kith and kin
The competition jury said Moore “worked for months to hand-draw in chalk a monumental First Nations family tree”.
Blank circles in the artwork signify the loss of family as a result of colonisation.
In the middle of the exhibit is a “reflective pool” which features documentation from coronial inquests into the deaths of incarcerated First Nations people since 1991.
The Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist’s work highlights the over-representation of First Nations people in prison.
First Nations people have some of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. First Nations people make up 3.8% of Australia’s population, but around a third of the prison population.
“Aboriginal kinship systems include all living things,” Moore said.
“We… share a responsibility of care to all living things now and into the future.”
