The Australia Council has announced leading First Nations artist Archie Moore will represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2024, with the exhibition to be curated by Ellie Buttrose.
2024 marks the 25th edition of Australia’s participation in the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest and arguably biggest international contemporary visual art event.
Based in Redlands, Queensland, Archie Moore is a contemporary artist whose career has spanned more than 25 years. The Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist works across a range of media to create artworks that explore both the personal and political. While his artistic practice reflects his personal background and confronts Australia’s national history, the powerful picture that it paints about the need for justice can be extrapolated worldwide.
“Thank you all for your tremendous belief in my proposed work for the Australia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale behemoth,” Archie Moore said.
“I would like to express my deep gratitude to all involved in making my team’s proposal the successful project for 2024.”
Curator and critic Ellie Buttrose serves as the Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, and said:
“I feel honoured that Archie has entrusted me to curate such a significant exhibition. Archie is singular in his ability to engage audiences on an emotional level through memories and familial stories in artworks that stimulate discussion about how we bear the responsibility for social change. Exhibiting at the Venice Biennale provides a timely and critical opportunity for Archie’s practice, offering an artistic outcome that will evocatively connect international audiences with the imperative act of truth-telling.
I am also delighted to be working with our expert team of contributors and the Australia Council to deliver a momentous project by an artist I have long esteemed. Artistically adroit and politically incisive, Archie is uniquely placed to confront Australia’s past and assert Indigenous sovereignty on a worldwide scale within the Australia Pavilion between 20 April – 24 November 2024.”
Australia Council Executive Director First Nations Arts and Culture Franchesca Cubillo said:
“This exhibition comes during a significant milestone as the Australia Council marks 50 years of dedicated investment to First Nations arts and culture – and to have an esteemed First Nations artist such as Archie Moore represent Australia on this global platform is something that all Australians can take pride in and celebrate.”
The successful artistic team was selected based on the advice of a panel of independent industry advisors including national and international visual arts experts. The Australia Council wishes to thank industry advisors Stephen Gilchrist, Carol Yinghua Lu, Victoria Lynn, Hammad Nasar, and Colin Walker for their considered deliberation in reaching this decision.
The Australia Council wishes to acknowledge and congratulate all the artistic teams shortlisted in this highly competitive process:
- Tony Albert, Liz Nowell and Hetti Perkins
- Brook Andrew, Atong Atem, Lucienne Rickard, Justin Shoulder, Latai Taumoepeau and Rebecca Coates
- Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino
- Yasmin Smith and Kathryn Weir
Australia’s representation within the Venice Biennale has been philanthropically supported since the early 1980s. In 2024, this co-investment approach is led by the Australia Council Chair and Chair of the Venice Biennale Ambassadors, Mr Robert Morgan, who said:
“Australia’s participation at the Venice Biennale is a wonderful example of what can be achieved by successfully bringing together public and private investment. The project builds a like-minded community of advocates championing the bold and ambitious intentions of what is unique to contemporary visual arts in Australia and provides a platform to showcase this to the world”.
Mr Morgan is joined by fellow Ambassadors from across Australia championing private investment support for this project, including Alexandra Dimos, Russell James OAM, Marie-Louise Theile, Alenka Tindale and Dr Terry Wu. The Australia Council thanks the Ambassadors for their strategic oversight and generous support of the 2024 exhibition.
Federal Minister for the Arts, the Hon Tony Burke MP, said:
“I announced the Government’s support for the new pavilion for the Venice Biennale back in 2013 when the decision was made to build it.
“You only have to look at the installation work of Archie Moore to imagine what a perfect choice this is for Australia’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale and how perfect the Australian pavilion is to host this work.
“The Australian Government committed in our National Cultural Policy – Revive – to put First Nations at the centre of Australia’s cultural heart.
“Opportunities like these help us to understand more about ourselves as Australians, more about each other, and help the world get to know us.”
The Australia Council will continue its role as the commissioner for Australia in the category of National Participation and work closely with the artistic team to produce the exhibition in the Australia Pavilion.
The Council will also work closely with the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane to facilitate an Australian presentation of the exhibition following the conclusion of the Venice Biennale 2024.
Media contact
Matt Fisher
Director, Communications
m.fisher@creative.gov.au
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, 22023 (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 a 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 Indigenous Australian songlines and the floating perspective found in Chinese and Japanese landscape painting traditions. Ellie is a member of the curatorial team for ‘The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ 2024, 2021 and 2018.
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.