Archie Moore: kith and kin
This artwork won the 2024 Venice Biennale's Golden Lion — and Australians can see it at home in Brisbane.
Overview
When Indigenous Australian artist Archie Moore made history at the 2024 La Biennale de Venezia, aka the Venice Biennale, in April 2024 by winning the event's coveted Golden Lion for Best National Participation, he also did Brisbane's major art galleries proud. When the First Nations talent earned Australia the top gong at the Olympics of the art world for the first time ever, he did so with an exhibition curated by Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art's Ellie Buttrose, and with a date with Brisbane GOMA on its 2025–26 program.
kith and kin is displaying in South Brisbane between Saturday, September 27, 2025–Sunday, October 18, 2026 — and it has also been gifted to QAGOMA permanently. The piece didn't just make history with its Venice Biennale accolade. A hand-drawn genealogical chart that spans back 65,000 years, this creation also chronicles it.
Both a personal and a political work, kith and kin steps through Moore's Kamilaroi, Bigambul, British and Scottish heritage across the installation's five-metre-high, 60-metre-long black walls. More than 2400 generations are covered. The exhibition uses chalk on blackboard, with a reflective pool sitting in the middle of the room and 500-plus document stacks suspended above it.
Every aspect of kith and kin makes a statement. With its size and scale, it speaks to Australia's Indigenous peoples being among the world's longest-continuous living cultures. The use of black is also designed to look like a celestial map, and therefore nod to the resting place of First Nations ancestors. Highlighting the decrease in Indigenous Australian languages and dialects since colonisation, the fragility that stems from not being able to pass down knowledge and injustices such as deaths in custody are all also part of the work — with the aforementioned piles of paper primarily from coronial inquests.
Images: Archie Moore / kith and kin 2024 / Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / Photographer Andrea Rossetti / © the artist / Images courtesy of the artist and The Commercial.
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