Australian premiere of Archie Moore’s 'kith and kin' now in Brisbane

Fri 26 Sep 2025

This is the first time kith and kin — the much-anticipated Australian debut — of the installation by Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore, has been displayed since it secured the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation at La Biennale de Venezia in 2024. You have the opportunity to experience this internationally significant work in Brisbane before it’s shared with the UK’s Tate.

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.

This is not a work that you see, kith and kin is an experience of total immersion. In depicting his own family tree, the artist has provided a window to the nation with our success, our failures and our challenges. In 2024, Moore took his Australian story to Venice, it's now back home in Queensland on display at the Gallery of Modern Art (27 Sep 2025 – 18 Oct 2026).

The remarkable and deeply affecting kith and kin comprises a vast genealogical chart capturing Moore’s First Nations Australian and convict British and Scottish connections spanning more than 2400 generations over 65,000 years — an extraordinary image of human connection through deep time.

Over several weeks, the artist 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 over-incarceration 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.

This impressive and moving installation 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. In collaboration with curator Ellie Buttrose, Moore 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
27 Sep 2025 – 18 Oct 2026
Gallery of Modern Art
Galleries 3.3 & 3.4 (Marica Sourris and James C. Sourris AM Galleries)
Free entry