Indigenous artist Archie Moore hand-chalked his vast family history for the 60th Venice Biennale - only to make history himself and become the first Australian ever to snare the coveted Golden Lion award. Held every two years over seven months, the biennale is the biggest event in the world arts calendar. It comprises a curated main exhibition and a cluster of shows hosted by 87 international countries in dedicated pavilions.
The full scale of Moore’s kith and kin inside the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Credit: Andrea Rossetti/The Commercial Moore inscribed in chalk 65,000 years of his genealogical history on the dark walls and ceiling of the Australian Pavilion for his installation kith and kin which judges said stood out for its “strong aesthetic, its lyricism and its invocation of a shared loss of an occluded past”. “With his inventory of thousands of names, Moore also offers a glimmer of the possibility of recovery,” the jury said.
Mataaho Collective , consisting of four Māori women artists, took out the Golden Lion for best main exhibition at the 60th Biennale. Moore is only the second solo First Nations artist to stage a work at the biennale regarded by some as the Olympics of the international art world. “As the water flows through the canals of Venice to the lagoon, then to the Adriatic Sea, it then travels to the oceans and to the rest of the world - enveloping the continent of Australia - connecting us all here on Earth,” Moore said acc.
