Queensland Art Gallery l Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) has unveiled kith and kin, an installation by Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore.
This is the first time the artwork has been displayed since it secured the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation at La Biennale de Venezia in 2024.
Commissioned by Creative Australia and curated by Ellie Buttrose, Curator of Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA for the Australian Pavilion at Venice, the work was subsequently gifted to the collections of both QAGOMA and Tate in the UK by Creative Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.
Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke said he was pleased the Archie Moore piece was going on public display. “This is not a work that you see, kith and kin is an experience of total immersion,” said Minister Burke.
“In depicting his own family tree, Archie Moore has provided a window to the nation with our success, our failures and our challenges. In 2024, Archie Moore took his Australian story to Venice. I’m pleased it’s now coming back home to Queensland.”
Queensland Minister for the Arts John-Paul Langbroek said the much-anticipated Australian debut of kith and kin at QAGOMA is an exciting event for Queensland. “Local audiences and visitors will have the opportunity to experience this internationally significant work by acclaimed Queensland artist Archie Moore at QAGOMA before it is shared with the UK’s Tate,” said Minister Langbroek.
First Nations Peoples of Australia are among the oldest continuous living cultures on earth; Archie Moore’s kith and kin affirms this by tracing the artist’s Kamilaroi and Bigambul relations over 65,000+ years. The artist’s extensive drawing captures the common ancestors of all humans alongside animals, plants, waterways and landforms in order to emphasise our kinship responsibilities to each other and our surroundings.
His choice of materials for this celestial map of names – fragile chalk on blackboard – addresses the need to disseminate First Nations histories and languages more widely. At the centre of the installation is a reflective pool, a memorial for First Nations individuals who have died in police custody, highlighting how Indigenous Australians are some of the most incarcerated people globally.
The coronial inquests stand in as administrative markers of the departed, who are cradled by the watery reflection of the handwritten family to commemorate their ties to this vast web of relations. In a Kamilaroi understanding of time, past, present and future are co-present. By placing tens of thousands of years of kin on a single continuum, Moore enfolds audiences within a First Nations understanding of time.
QAGOMA Director Chris Saines said he was immensely proud to be presenting kith and kin, a remarkable and deeply affecting artwork, to Australian audiences. “The artwork comprises a vast genealogical chart capturing Archie Moore’s First Nations Australian and convict British and Scottish connections spanning more than 2400 generations over 65,000 years,” he said.
“Over several weeks, Archie and a team of installers have meticulously hand-drawn this ancestral map in chalk across a large expanse of four walls in a stand-alone room specially built to replicate the internal dimensions of the Australia Pavilion in Venice.”
“The work also confronts the ongoing legacies of Australia’s colonial history and the overincarceration of First Nations people, with a collection of coronial reports on deaths in custody suspended above a memorial pool in the centre of the room.
“When I first encountered Moore’s installation in the Australia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024, it was both impressive and moving; resonating with the weight of history, the experience stilled you into silence and reflection.”
“It’s an unimaginable endeavour to map a personal genealogy through more than two thousand generations, and kith and kin powerfully summons an extraordinary image of human connection through deep time,” said Saines.
Curator Ellie Buttrose said she was honoured to first present Moore’s work to an international audience in Venice in 2024 and then for Archie and her to receive the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation.
“Receiving the Golden Lion in Venice was a pivotal moment of global recognition for an outstanding artwork by an Australian artist. I am thrilled we can present kith and kin at GOMA for local and visiting audiences to experience until 18 October 2026,” said Buttrose.
“Archie Moore’s kith and kin captivated the world in Venice, securing its place in history as the first Australian work to win the prestigious Golden Lion. Now Australian audiences have the chance to experience it for themselves,” said Creative Australia CEO, Adrian Collette AM.
“In collaboration with curator Ellie Buttrose, Archie has created a work that speaks with both personal intimacy and universal resonance, affirming the enduring place of First Nations stories at the centre of our cultural life.”
Archie Moore: kith and kin will be shown alongside Inscribing a Life – an exhibition of works from QAGOMA’s Collection celebrating the intensity and wonder of existence, histories, and time through the act of mark making. It includes work by Hossein Valamanesh, Shirley Macnamara, Georg Baselitz, Simryn Gill, Gulumbu Yunupingu and others.
Archie Moore: kith and kin
Queensland Art Gallery l Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Stanley Place, South Brisbane
Exhibition continues to 18 October 2026
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.qagoma.qld.gov.au for details.
Images: Archie Moore, Kamilaroi/Bigambul peoples, Australia b.1970, kith and kin (installation view, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane), 2024. Presented to Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and Tate by Creative Australia on behalf of the Australian Government 2024. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, © Archie Moore – photos by N Umek © QAGOMA |