Please note: Some of the content on this page was published prior to the launch of Creative Australia and references the Australia Council. Read more.

Venice Biennale 2024

Archie Moore and Ellie Buttrose are the artist and curator commissioned by Creative Australia to exhibit at the Australia Pavilion for the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

Drawing upon 25 years of practice, Archie Moore (Kamilaroi/Bigambul) is uniquely placed to confront Australia’s past and evocatively assert Indigenous sovereignty on a worldwide scale at the Venice Biennale. Exhibiting at the Venice Biennale provides a timely and critical opportunity for Archie’s practice, offering an artistic outcome that will emotionally connect international audiences with the imperative act of truth-telling.

Creative Australia is the commissioner for Australia’s National Participation at the Venice Biennale 2024 and the producer of the Australia at the Venice Biennale project.

Artistic Team 2024

Image courtesy of Creative Australia. Photography by Anna Hay, February 2023.

Click on the ‘+’ to read the bios.

Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore (b. 1970, Toowoomba) works across media in conceptual, research-based portrayals of self and national histories. His ongoing interests include key signifiers of identity (skin, language, smell, home, genealogy, flags), the borders of intercultural understanding and misunderstanding and the wider concerns of racism.

Recent solo exhibitions by Archie include: ‘Pillors of Democracy’, Cairns Art Gallery, 2023 (forthcoming); ‘Dwelling (Victorian Issue)’ 2022, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; ‘The Colour Line: Archie Moore & W.E.B. Du Bois’ 2021, University of New South Wales Galleries, Sydney; and ‘Archie Moore 1970–2018’ 2018, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Significant recent group exhibitions comprise: ‘Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia’ 2022, National Gallery of Singapore; ‘Embodied Knowledge: Queensland Contemporary Art’ 2022, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; ‘UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA’ 2021, Seoul Museum of Art; ‘Indigenous Art Triennial’ 2017, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; ‘The National: New Australian Art’ 2017, Carriageworks, Sydney; and ‘Biennale of Sydney’ 2016, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. In 2018, Archie’s United Neytions was permanently installed at Sydney Airport’s International Terminal.

Archie’s artworks are held in major public collections across Australia including: Artbank; Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Murray Art Museum Albury; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Newcastle Region Art Gallery; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane; University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; and University of Sydney; and University of Technology Sydney.

Archie Moore is represented by The Commercial, Sydney

How aesthetic debates contribute to political transformation is the subject of Ellie Buttrose’s curatorial projects and critical writing.

Ellie is the Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, overseeing collection development and display, major commissions, and exhibitions. With Katina Davidson, Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, she co-curated ‘Embodied Knowledge: Queensland Contemporary Art’ 2022 that featured the centrepiece commission Inert State 2022 by Archie Moore. Ellie’s forthcoming exhibition ‘Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction’ 2023 features artists who deploy abstraction as a formal and political device. She curated: ‘Work, Work, Work’ 2019 an exhibition about the entwinement of civic and artistic labour; and ‘Limitless Horizon: Vertical Perspective’ 2017, which rethought the impact of drone vision on contemporary art via the birds’-eye view paintings of Country by Indigenous Australian artists and the floating perspective found in Chinese and Japanese landscape painting traditions. Ellie has been a      member of the curatorial team for ‘The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ since 2015.

In 2020, 2019 and 2018, Ellie was a guest curator for the Brisbane International Film Festivals; she curated ‘Material Place: Reconsidering Australian Landscapes’ 2019 at University of New South Wales Galleries, Sydney, which considered how experiments with artistic media reflect changing attitudes towards the environment; and served on the curatorium for ‘Cosmopolis: Collective Intelligence’ 2017 at Centre Pompidou, Paris, that showcased artistic practices centred on knowledge sharing and the development of social fabric. Ellie is a curatorial advisor to Parallel, an Australian Research Council Linkage project by University of New South Wales, Western Sydney University, and University of Sydney with the Murray Art Museum Albury.

Venice Ambassadors

Robert Morgan (Chair)

Alexandra Dimos

Russell James OAM

Marie-Louise Theile

Alenka Tindale

Dr Terry Wu


Venice Visionaries

Robert and Vanessa Morgan

Anthony and Clare Cross

Paul and Samantha Cross


Venice Patrons

Russell James OAM and Ali Franco

Nunn Dimos Foundation

Penelope Seidler AM 

Marie-Louise Theile

Alenka Tindale

Dr Terry Wu and Dr Melinda Tee


Companions

The Calile Hotel 

Sarah and Berkeley Cox 

The Keir Foundation

Annabel Myer and Rupert Myer AO

Marita Onn and John Tuck

Frank Pollio


Supporters

Anton Andreacchio and Emily Small

Anonymous, in memory of Harold Blair AM

Kerry Gardner AM and Andrew Myer AM

Rachel Griffiths AM and Andrew Taylor

Elizabeth Pakchung

Fiona Sinclair

The Tai Family 


Exhibition Partner

BVN Architecture


Education Partner

University of Melbourne


Friends

Paul and Wendy Bonnici 

Andy Dinan and Mario Lo Giudice

Tahmina Maskinyar 

Mary McCarter

Judy and David Tynan 

Peter Walker and Caroline Webber 

Image credit:

Archie Moore, Black Dog, 2013, taxidermy dog, shoe polish, raven oil, leather, metal, 70.00 x 73.00 x 32.00 cm (detail)

Collection: The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Copyright the artist

Courtesy The Commercial, Sydney

Photograph by Carl Warner