Exploring Over-Incarceration, Language Decline, and Shared Ancestry through Art at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, entitled ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’ and curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
Archie Moore and Ellie Buttrose with kith and kin 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Photographer Andrea Rossetti. The Australia Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2024 is commissioned by Creative Australia, 20 April – 24 November 2024.
The Australia Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia features a poignant and impactful exhibition titled “kith and kin” by renowned artist Archie Moore, curated by Ellie Buttrose. This exhibition delves into the critical issue of over-incarceration of First Nations peoples in Australia, making it a central theme. Moore, driven by the continued deaths of First Nations individuals in police custody, uses his art to highlight the vast scale of this issue and the failure of institutions to implement necessary changes. The exhibition’s design, created in consultation with architect Kevin O’Brien, features a reflective pool that symbolises contemplation and the uniting of heaven and earth, enhancing the narrative of the interconnectedness of all peoples. The genealogical chart, hand-drawn by Moore, spans the walls and ceiling, reflecting First Nations languages’ decline and colonialism’s impact. Curator Ellie Buttrose brings a nuanced perspective to the exhibition, emphasising the shared ancestry and humanity that binds us all, reinforcing our collective responsibilities.
Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’, 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Courtesy of the artist and The Commercial. Photographer: Andrea Rossetti. © the artist
ART AFRICA: What inspired the decision to make the over-incarceration of First Nations peoples a central theme in Archie Moore’s ‘kith and kin’ exhibition?
Ellie Buttrose: After attending yet another vigil for a First Nations person who had died in police custody, Archie felt the need to address in his art the fact that First Nations people in Australia are globally one of the most incarcerated populations. In 1991, there was an independent report released called The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody that provided 339 recommendations – including self-determination for First Nations peoples – for structural changes to limit the number of deaths. Unfortunately, many of the recommendations in the report have still not been implemented – and the deaths continue. An estimated 557 First Nations people have died in police custody since the report was released, and by showing the paperwork related to these deaths, Archie makes visible the scale of the issue, when statistically presented in newspaper articles and government reports, remains ignored. The paperwork that Archie has included in ‘kith and kin’ are investigations into each death that detail how the police, medical staff, and processes failed. These institutions know what needs to be changed to stop the deaths, yet they continue. Moreover, by showing these investigations into First Nations deaths in custody surrounded by a vast genealogical chart, Archie shows how each death impacts families.
Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’, 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Courtesy of the artist and The Commercial. Photographer: Andrea Rossetti. © the artist
Can you elaborate on how Moore’s use of language in the genealogical chart reflects the decline of First Nations Australia languages and the impact of colonialism?
First Nations people have lived on the continent now known as Australia for more than 65,000 years – long before the British invaded a little over 250 years ago. Reflecting this, Archie has written First Nations names across most of the genealogical chat, which spans 60 meters, up the five-meter-high walls and onto the ceiling. He has also included Bigambul and Gamilaraay kinship terms (the languages of his mother’s Bigambul and Kamilaroi ancestors). Due to the legacy of pernicious policies that moved First Nations people off their traditional lands, separated families and banned people from speaking their native tongue, Archie doesn’t speak his mother’s family’s languages and accesses them through dictionaries and archives. Just above eye height, Archie has included racial slurs that he found in the English-language archive when searching for his family members. In the lower sections of the tree, there are English and German first, middle and second names for both his English/Scottish and Bigambul/Kamilaroi family members, which shows how – due to colonisation – his Indigenous family members no longer use their traditional languages. The family tree is not a static object so the hope is that future generations will use Bigambul and Gamilaraay names.
Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’, 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Courtesy of the artist and The Commercial. Photographer: Andrea Rossetti. © the artist
The reflective pool at the Pavilion’s centre adds a poignant dimension to the exhibition. Could you share more about the symbolism behind its inclusion and how it contributes to the narrative of ‘kith and kin’?
We worked on the exhibition design with consultant architect Kevin O’Brien to respond to the architecture of the black box Australia Pavilion, which resembles a mausoleum. The architectural gesture of the reflective pool originates from Persia and is found at many memorials around the world, providing a place for quiet contemplation. The sky’s reflection in the water symbolises the uniting of the heavens and earth. In ‘kith and kin’, the ancestors on the walls and ceiling are mirrored in the water. Stacks of redacted bureaucratic documents are suspended just above the memorial pool. Because they hover at a low height, visitors must respectfully bow when inspecting the artwork. The revealed stacks are predominantly coronial inquests into First Nations deaths in police custody. By placing this publicly available information at arm’s length in the centre of the reflection pool, Archie articulates the gap between knowledge and action.
How do you see ‘kith and kin’ contributing to broader conversations about the interconnectedness of all peoples and the importance of acknowledging shared ancestry and humanity?
The genealogical chart that Archie has hand-drawn onto the Australia Pavilion charts his family over 65,000 years. Anyone can trace back a few thousand years in their family tree to find the common ancestor of all living humans. Archie pronounces that every audience member has kinship responsibilities to the artist and everyone else by including the shared antecedents of all humanity within the family tree. In addition to DNA and chosen affinities, this duty is reinforced through our shared planet. Archie incorporates plants, animals, waterways, and land in his vast kinship network to indicate that our obligations are not limited to humankind. Our shared responsibility to humanity is further reinforced by leaving the window of the Australia Pavilion open to reveal the Venetian canal below, a body of water that connects to the sea and, in turn, to all the world’s oceans and continents. In ‘kith and kin’, art and life are inseparable.
Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’, 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Courtesy of the artist and The Commercial. Photographer: Andrea Rossetti. © the artist
The jury of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia praised the exhibition for its solid aesthetic and strong lyricism. Could you discuss how the aesthetic choices, such as the hand-drawn genealogical chart and the reflective pool, were made to enhance the exhibition’s impact?
The Australia Pavilion’s walls and ceiling are coated in blackboard paint with the names of Archie’s limitless family tree handwritten across them in white chalk. The artist uses the media of chalk and blackboard as markers for education. Archie was not taught First Nations histories at school, and his artwork goes some way to redress this gap. The drawing begins linearly, reflecting the anthropologists’ diagrams used to study First Nations people. As the drawing progresses up the wall, it transforms into an undulating web, which, for Archie, represents a First Nations understanding of family. Among the traces of chalk in the sprawling network are gaps and moments of erasure. These absences and omissions speak to incidents of physical destruction, such as massacres, the introduction of diseases, and the removal of children, and to incidents of spiritual and psychic destruction, including historical amnesia and the concerted efforts to erase people and their culture from the public record. Representation cannot convey the weight of devastation, so the artist turns to abstraction. The reflection pool is another black void, that signals the vast loss that First Nations deaths in police custody have on communities. The tragedies of institutionalisation and failed legislation are recounted in a cold administrative fashion in the coronial inquests, contrasting with the personal and hand-drawn tactility of the family tree. Represented are reports that are not publicly accessible with a blank ream of paper – visual voids expressing breaches in the record. These white absences are instances of lack of justice, accountability and closure. Using impermanent material like chalk to draw the family tree, Archie reflects the fragility of a single perspective that he suggests could be erased without a trace. While his voice is singular, the vertiginous volume of names he recounts is confirmation that Archie’s position draws on the knowledge of hundreds of thousands of his forebears.
The Australia Pavilion is on view until the 24th of November, 2024. For more information, please visit the Australia Pavilion.
