kith and kin: In Conversation with Archie Moore, Ellie Buttrose and Grace Lucas-Pennington

In April 2024, Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist Archie Moore’s exhibition kith and kin  at the Australia Pavilion was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for Best National Participation at La Biennale de Venezia 2024. This is the first time that an Australian artist has received this accolade. 

In kith and kin, Moore transforms the Australia Pavilion with the artist’s expansive, genealogical chart spanning 65,000 years. kith and kin is commissioned by Creative Australia and curated by UQ alum (Bachelor of Arts ’07) Ellie Buttrose.

In celebration of this historic moment, please join Ellie Buttrose (Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art) in conversation with artist Archie Moore and Bundjalung editor and poet Grace Lucas-Pennington. Together, they will discuss Moore’s exhibition kith and kin and the unparalleled experiences that led them to Venice; of community, kinship, and the infinite relations that connect us all.  

Doors will open at 4:30pm with the talk commencing at 5pm – 6pm. 

Please note, due to increased demand and to accomodate additional guests, we have decided to change the venue location for the talk to room 348, Physiology Lecture Theatres (63), UQ St Lucia. Following the talk, please join us at the UQ Art Museum for refreshments.

This event is proudly associated with UQ Arts. 

Important event information

• This is a free event. Due to limited capacity, please advise us if you are no longer able to attend so your seat can be offered to another guest. 
• Please note any accessibility requirements through the registration page. Please note that a 2 week lead time is required to secure Auslan's interpretation of this event. 
• Our St Lucia campus is conveniently serviced by public transport (view public transport options here). Free parking is also available on weekends. Please refer to the UQ St Lucia parking map to view parking areas.
• All ages welcome. 18+ ID required to consume alcohol. Anyone who appears to look under 25 years old will need to provide proof of age on entry. 
• All attendees must register with event staff upon entry. 

Event speakers

Archie Moore 

Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore (b. 1970, Toowoomba) works across media in conceptual, research-based portrayals of self and national histories. His ongoing interests include key signifiers of identity (skin, language, smell, home, genealogy, flags), the borders of intercultural understanding and misunderstanding and the wider concerns of racism.  

Recent solo exhibitions by Archie include: Pillors of Democracy, 2023, Cairns Art Gallery; Dwelling (Victorian Issue), 2022, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; The Colour Line: Archie Moore & W.E.B. Du Bois, 2021, University of New South Wales Galleries, Sydney; and Archie Moore 1970–2018, 2018, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Significant recent group exhibitions comprise: Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia, 2022, National Gallery of Singapore; Embodied Knowledge: Queensland Contemporary Art, 2022, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA, 2021, Seoul Museum of Art; Indigenous Art Triennial, 2017, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The National: New Australian Art, 2017, Carriageworks, Sydney; and Biennale of Sydney, 2016, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. In 2018, Archie’s United Neytions was permanently installed at Sydney Airport’s International Terminal.  

Archie’s artworks are held in major public collections across Australia including: Artbank; Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Murray Art Museum Albury; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Newcastle Art Gallery; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane; University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; and University of Sydney; and University of Technology Sydney. His art is also held in the collection of Fondation Opale, Lens, Switzerland.  

Archie Moore is represented by The Commercial, Sydney.  

Ellie Buttrose 

How aesthetic debates inform the political imaginary is the subject of Ellie Buttrose’s curatorial projects and critical writing.  

Ellie is a Curator at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. With Katina Davidson, Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, she co-curated Embodied Knowledge, 2022, that featured the centrepiece commission Inert State, 2022, by Archie Moore. Ellie recently curated: Living Patterns, 2023, focused on artists who deploy abstraction as a political as well as formal device; Work, Work, Work, 2019, about the entwinement of civic and artistic labour; and Limitless Horizon: Vertical Perspective, 2017, which rethought the impact of drone vision on contemporary art via the bird’s-eye view paintings of First Nations Australian songlines and the floating perspective in Chinese and Japanese landscape painting traditions. Ellie is a member of the curatorial team for The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, 2024, 2021 and 2018.  

In 2020, 2019 and 2018, Ellie was a guest curator for the Brisbane International Film Festival; she curated Material Place: Reconsidering Australian Landscapes, 2019, at University of New South Wales Galleries, Sydney, which considered how experiments with artistic media reflect changing attitudes towards the environment; and served on the curatorium for Cosmopolis: Collective Intelligence, 2017, at Centre Pompidou, Paris, that showcased artistic practices centred on knowledge sharing and the development of social fabric.  

Grace Lucas-Pennington 

Grace Lucas-Pennington is an Aboriginal (Bundajalung) editor specialising in First Nations fiction and poetry. She grew up mostly between northern NSW and the greater Logan/Brisbane area. Grace is the Senior Editor at State Library of Queensland's black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project is on the Board of Byron Bay Writers Festival. Grace was awarded the 2020 Nakata Brophy Prize for poetry. She is passionately committed to developing and promoting First Nations storytelling.