Toowoomba-born artist Archie Moore’s exhibition to Garden City after Golden Lion win in Venice
An internationally-acclaimed Toowoomba-born artist’s abstract exhibition exploring race and identity is now in Toowoomba, ahead of a massive debut later this year in Brisbane.
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An acclaimed indigenous artist’s abstract self-portrait exhibition exploring identity and racial profiling is now in Toowoomba until next month.
Toowoomba-born Kamilaroi and Bigambul man Archie Moore’s 2022 display, called Mial, will be on appear at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery until August 3.
The touring exhibition, which is supported by the National Portrait Gallery, consists of multiple geometric paintings that represent the artist’s body and skin colour.
It continues Mr Moore’s explorations into the politics of identity, racism and language systems, and encourages viewers to consider Australia’s history with racial profiling.
“At Bunnings, a colour sample of any material can be scanned, allocated RGB+LV colour values and matched with corresponding paint amounts to replicate that sample into a tin of paint,” Mr Moore said in 2022 when discussing Mial.
“I have used the same technology to scan various areas of my own body and left it up to the small handheld scanner and its software to suggest to me what colour I am.
“The results – mediated by the scanner lens, software, my phone screen, converting RGB+LV values into Pantone ones and then the paint colour itself will further shift as it ages – hang on the wall for the viewer to observe and assess.”
Mr Moore said Mial was a way for him to explore skin colour as a “vast spectrum from dark to light”, rather than through “stubborn binary opposites”.
He also expressed concern with Bunning’s use of biometric facial recognition upon entry to the store, describing it as a breach of “my autonomy and privacy”.
“News articles of the past few weeks on the use of this technology in liberal democracies and the ethical boundaries it breaches reminded me of an earlier story about the New York Police Department employing facial recognition software to search by skin colour,” he wrote.
It comes just a year after Mr Moore became the first Australian to win the Golden Lion award for best national participation last year at the 60th Venice Biennale, considered by many to be the “Olympics of the art world”.
He won the award for his acclaimed piece kith and kin, a massive piece that captures the “common ancestors of all humans alongside animals, plants, waterways and landforms”.
It was picked up by Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art, which will debut it to the public in September.
“Moore’s conceptual practice encompasses a range of media, including installation, sculpture and photography,” the Toowoomba council’s website said.
“Tracing personal memory and familial histories, Moore interrogates identity through the politics of skin, language revival, notions of home and genealogy.
“A throughline in his work over three decades is the legacy of colonisation and its ongoing effects on First Nations peoples.”
Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery at 531 Ruthven Street is open Wednesday to Sunday 10.30am – 3.30pm. Entry is free.
Originally published as Toowoomba-born artist Archie Moore’s exhibition to Garden City after Golden Lion win in Venice
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