‘Corruption of principles’: Venice Biennale sacking fallout grows

Australia’s much-lauded winner of the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Biennale, Archie Moore, has lashed the decision by Creative Australia’s board to strip the nation’s selected representatives of the chance to exhibit at the prestigious arts festival.

Moore and curator Ellie Buttrose said they were appalled by the decision of the board to rescind the contract of Khaled Sabsabi “quickly and without transparent process” following questions and “politically motivated accusations” in parliament last week.

Indigenous artist Archie Moore won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for his Kith and Kin pavilion.Credit: Andrea Rossetti

“It is distressing to see that the arm’s length objectivity of the Australian Pavilion’s selection process is so easily undone and that the independence of Creative Australia is so quickly compromised,” they said in a statement.

“To regain its credibility, Creative Australia must return to its founding mandate: supporting artistic practice, advocating for freedom of expression, and promoting the understanding of the arts.”

“The decision by Creative Australia Board to remove the 2026 Artistic Team is a corruption of its core principles, and the longer term and wider implications for Australian artists, art professionals and audiences are unacceptable.”

Moore and Buttrose were the first Australian team to be awarded the top prize at the biennale in 2024 for their project kith and kin – a chalked genealogy that ranged across the walls of the Australian Pavilion.

Lebanese-born Sabsabi and the much-respected curator Michael Dagostino were named as Moore and Buttrose’s successors for the 2026 Venice Biennale earlier this month.

Five days later, the board revoked the contract in a snap meeting convened in the aftermath of Coalition questions in the Senate about the artist’s 2006 video rendering of the New York 9/11 attacks, called Thank You Very Much, and a 2007 work depicting the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Australian artist Ben Quilty described Creative Australia’s decision as “governance failure on governance failure”. He said Sabsabi was “a very beautiful, very peaceful man”.

“The thing that I found most extraordinary is that the work that keeps being brought up is 20 years old, and the leader of Hezbollah was a legitimate political leader in the Middle East at that time. It was 12 years later that his organisation was designated a terrorist organisation,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday morning.

A still from Sabsabi’s video installation You (2007) showing then Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

“To bring Khaled down for that is just mind-blowing, and a sad indictment on how politics and broader society end up affecting the artist. The artist becomes the soft underbelly, the litmus test, the first to be brought down when there’s an election cycle to be won and the political cycle is so fraught and so heated, and I think Khaled is collateral damage for this seething fury in the community at the moment which is totally out of control – and his work, and works like his, will only take the heat out of those arguments, given the opportunity to show his work.”

Quilty also said Dagostino had been “working tirelessly for marginalised communities in western Sydney for many, many years” and that both men deserved to be recognised.

The criticism comes as the National Gallery of Australia was accused Thursday of concealing a Palestinian flag appearing on a piece of protest tapestry on public show in Canberra.

The large tapestry created by a Pacific Indigenous art collective features the Aboriginal flag, the Torres Strait Islander flag, the West Papua flag, and other social justice slogans and symbols.

Only the tricolour Palestinian flag has been covered with white fabric.

The tapestry formed part of the Te Paepae Aora’i – Where the Gods Cannot be Fooled exhibition, a group show by Pacific Indigenous art collective SaVĀge K’lub.

Former head of the Art Gallery Society and arts writer Judith White labelled the flag cover-up as a blatant attempt at censorship and called on the gallery to immediately restore the tapestry to its original condition.

“This would be an act of cultural vandalism wherever it occurred. But for it to happen in the National Gallery of Australia is nothing short of criminal,” she wrote the NGA’s director Nick Mitzevich. The NGA has yet to comment.

Get the day’s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter here.