Considered one of Australia’s most inventive multi-disciplinary artists, Archie Moore’s practice revolves around slippages in language and identity, often evoking the ways in which cultural context affects meaning. Born in Tara, Queensland, but based in Brisbane for most of his life, Moore’s work has achieved widespread acclaim throughout Australia since he graduated from the Queensland University of Technology in 1998. On the occasion of ‘False Friends’—his first solo exhibition in Darwin at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art—curator Wes Hill interviewed Moore about the ideas that inform his work, his wavering sense of identity, and the problem of being categorised as a ‘contemporary aboriginal artist’.
Wes Hill: Your work is about many things and spans a diverse array of media, but what comes through the most to me is your preoccupation with categorisation, how we systematise meaning, and how this process can serve to constrict identity. When and why did you become interested in this kind of approach to art?
Archie Moore: Well, on a psychological level I am always unsure of who I am, what I mean to myself and also what I might mean to others—sort of existing inside and outside myself simultaneously. I shift between these states and I don’t know where to be. Through racism, I became aware I was separate from the social identity of the small rural town I grew up in. Through them telling me I was someone ‘other’. I would also try to investigate my vacillating identities by looking at the relationship of my (alleged) father and mother, who were polar opposites of each other. My father was white, educated, hard-working, passionate, and religious. My mother was black, finished school... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Archie Moore, Snowdome, 2013. Sculpture. Courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney.
Archie Moore, Depth of Field, 2006. Exhibition detail. Courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney.
