The 60th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition opened on the weekend, with the major project by Queensland artist Archie Moore and QAGOMA curator Ellie Buttrose awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. The first work by an Australian artist to receive the prestigious accolade, Moore’s kith and kin was acknowledged by the jury ‘for its strong aesthetic, its lyricism and its invocation of a shared loss of an occluded past.
The artwork, in Venice’s Australia Pavilion , immerses the viewer in personal and universal stories that situate Australia’s short two-and-a-half centuries of colonisation alongside the sweeping 65 millennia of Aboriginal occupation and heritage.
Archie Moore ‘kith and kin’ 2024
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Archie Moore, Kamilaroi/Bigambul peoples, Australia b.1970 / kith and kin 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / © Archie Moore / Courtesy: Archie Moore and The Commercial, Sydney / View full image
Archie Moore & Ellie Buttrose with ‘kith and kin’ 2024
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Archie Moore and Ellie Buttrose with kith and kin 2024, Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / Photograph: Andrea Rossetti / View full image
Australia Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2024
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Australia Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2024 / The Australia Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2024 is commissioned by Creative Australia, 20 April – 24 November 2024 / View full image
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Australia Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2024 / The Australia Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2024 is commissioned by Creative Australia, 20 April – 24 November 2024 / View full image
Today, the phrase ‘kith and kin’ simply means ‘friends and family’, but an Old English definition of kith — dating from the 1300s — originally meant ‘countrymen’, while other interpretations have taken kith to mean ‘one’s native land’. Many Indigenous Australians see the land and other living things as part of their kinship system — the land itself can be a mentor, teacher, or parent to a child. Regarding the earlier definition of the word ‘kith’, Moore has said: ‘I was interested in the phrase as it aptly describes the artwork in the Pavilion, but I was also interested in the Old English meaning of the words as it feels more like a First Nations understanding of attachment to place, people and time’.
On receiving this award, Archie Moore said:
‘As the water flows through the canals of Venice to the lagoon, then to the Adriatic Sea, it then travels to the oceans and to the rest of the world — enveloping the continent of Australia — connecting us all here on Earth. Aboriginal kinship systems include all living things from the environment in a larger network of relatedness, the land itself can be a mentor or a parent to a child. We are all one and share a responsibility of care to all living things now and into the future.
I am very grateful for this accolade; it makes me feel honoured to be rewarded for the hard work one does. I am grateful to everyone who has always been part of my journey — from my kith to my kin — to my Creative Australia team and everyone else back home and those of the Venice lagoon.’
Ellie Buttrose said that Moore’s work profoundly affected those who listen, enfolding all of us into his family.
‘To be kin is to carry responsibilities; duties for each other and all living things throughout time. This commendation is a celebration of Archie’s generosity — it is an honour to witness his art,’ she said.
QAGOMA Director Chris Saines called kith and kin a spectacular and moving installation that resonates with the weight of history and ancestry.
‘In its seemingly impossible endeavour to map a personal genealogy through more than two thousand generations — beginning with an unaffected “Me” — Moore summons up an extraordinary image of human connection through deep time. A memorial to remembering, kith and kin has that rare power to still you into silence and reflection. Queensland should be incredibly proud that this work occupies the Australia Pavilion at the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event,’ Mr Saines said.
Archie Moore ‘kith and kin’ (details) 2024
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Archie Moore, Kamilaroi/Bigambul peoples, Australia b.1970 / kith and kin (detail) 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / © Archie Moore / Courtesy: Archie Moore and The Commercial, Sydney / View full image
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Archie Moore, Kamilaroi/Bigambul peoples, Australia b.1970 / kith and kin (detail) 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / © Archie Moore / Courtesy: Archie Moore and The Commercial, Sydney / View full image
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Archie Moore, Kamilaroi/Bigambul peoples, Australia b.1970 / kith and kin (detail) 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / © Archie Moore / Courtesy: Archie Moore and The Commercial, Sydney / View full image
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Archie Moore, Kamilaroi/Bigambul peoples, Australia b.1970 / kith and kin (detail) 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / © Archie Moore / Courtesy: Archie Moore and The Commercial, Sydney / View full image
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Archie Moore, Kamilaroi/Bigambul peoples, Australia b.1970 / kith and kin (detail) 2024. Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / © Archie Moore / Courtesy: Archie Moore and The Commercial, Sydney / View full image
Featured image: Archie Moore with kith and kin 2024, Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / © Archie Moore / Courtesy: Archie Moore and The Commercial, Sydney / Photograph: Andrea Rossetti
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As part of QAGOMA’s Collection Online project, the Gallery joins forces with Queensland University of Technology (QUT) for a new Digital Residency, writes Tonya Turner, that will reveal how digital experiences can best engage virtual and on-the-ground visitors.
The residency will break new ground in understanding how visitors engage with art and digital interactives across gallery spaces. Undertaken by QUT’s Associate Professor of Digital Pedagogies, Dr Kate Thompson, the residency also provides a detailed review of existing research into how people use and learn from digital museum experiences.
According to Thompson, there is much work to be done in the field. ‘Digital interactions are a powerful way to immerse visitors in an experience that can extend the art in a lot of different ways — there just isn’t a lot of research on it’, she says. Thompson’s planned outcome of the residency is a set of design principles, ‘so if you’d like your exhibit to have a particular impact, you’ll have guidance’.
RELATED: European masterpieces digitally enhanced
This residency will measure engagement on a custom-built, small-scale virtual tour (created by QAGOMA’s Digital Transformation Manager, Morgan Strong), in which Gallery visitors are invited to partake via their smartphones or other personal devices. The project will start with a handful of interactives, expanding to include more works and tour points as the Gallery digitises more of its Collection; and test how engaging in-person visitors find various digital features, including high‑resolution imagery, map-based explorations, image sliders, essays and other digital content.
Among the works on the virtual tour is one of the Gallery’s most popular paintings, Under the jacaranda 1903 by R Godfrey Rivers. Visitors can go deeper into the world of the painting via an image slider and essay. ‘It will be fascinating to see what type of detail people are interested in’, says Thompson, whose team will determine which digital features have visitors hooked. ‘We’ll be able to collect information about what they’re clicking on’, she says.
Esteemed Pintupi/Ngaatjatjarra artist Doreen Reid Nakamarra’s Untitled (Marrapinti) 2008 is also part of the tour. This painting is ‘normally displayed flat on a table in the Gallery’, says Thompson, ‘so the high-resolution digitisation allows visitors to pinch and zoom to see the detail in the work’.
RELATED: ‘Under the jacaranda’ image slider
DELVE DEEPER: The art of R Godfrey Rivers
In the international art collection, an interactive map will take visitors on a whirlwind tour of the world. Pinpointing the origins of works by Camille Pissarro, Spencer Gore, John Russell, Edgar Degas, Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec, the map connects art-lovers to places ‘that can be difficult to imagine from so far away’, says Morgan Strong, allowing ‘more of an appreciation of [a work’s] context and how it was created’. In this way, a visitor can zoom in on Degas’s Trois danseuses a la classe de danse (Three dancers at a dance class) c.1888–90, then take a virtual trip to Paris to map out his artistic neighbours and contemporaries.
RELATED: Zoom in on ‘Three dancers at a dance class’
DELVE DEEPER: The art of Edgar Degas
The Digital Residency forms part of QAGOMA’s Collection Online digitisation project, which aims to make the Gallery’s entire Collection accessible virtually through photography, 3D imaging, timelapse records of installation and more. Collection Online is the largest component of the QAGOMA Digital Transformation Initiative, a wide-reaching program moving the Gallery towards a digitally integrated future.
Tonya Turner is a freelance writer. She spoke to Morgan Strong and Dr Kate Thompson in November 2021.
QAGOMA Foundation
You can help make our Collection accessible alongside inspiring and thought-provoking digital resources by donating online or contacting Dominique Jones, Philanthropy Manager on (07) 3840 7246.
QAGOMA Business Development and Partnerships
For details on our Corporate Partnership initiatives, please contact the Gallery’s Head of Business Development and Partnerships, Kylie Lonergan, on (07) 3840 7641 or email kylie.lonergan@qagoma.qld.gov.au.
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Featured image: A visitor using QAGOMA’s interactive digital experience to dive deeper into the story of Judy Watson’s tow row 2016 / Photograph: C Callistemon © QAGOMA
The Collection Online project currently underway at QAGOMA aims to digitally capture every work in the Collection, making them as accessible to the public as possible. Many older works, some of which haven’t been displayed in decades, have been retrieved from the depths of storage and given their moment in front of the camera.
When you imagine a conservator at work, you might picture a person wearing a lab coat and gloves, carefully cleaning a sculpture with a cotton swab or using a microscope to adhere a tiny flake of paint. You might picture them in a conservation laboratory, surrounded with scientific equipment and tools of their trade, spending hours preparing a work for its moment in the spotlight. What you might not realise is that along with the skills required to physically repair or prepare a work of art for display, a conservator may also need to be an art detective. Sleuthing through old records and library archives reveals important information about the work and the artist’s intent and by drawing these fragments of information together, both the physical work and its meaning can be restored.
It’s usually quite easy to determine how two-dimensional works, like paintings, should hang, but when sculptures or assemblages have multiple parts — and sometimes hundreds — it becomes more complicated. Exhibition change-overs can be hectic and it’s sometimes impossible to create and save installation information systematically, particularly when large installations arrive en masse for exhibitions like ‘The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT), which are displayed across the two gallery buildings. If an artist installs the work themselves, they may not always record how the pieces fit together, or what their requirements are for future reinstallation in different contexts and spaces (what we call ‘iterations’).
In some instances where works have not been installed since the 1980s and 90s — before digital cameras — images of the install process are rare. For example, for one sculptural installation collected in 1982 a handwritten note from the artist instructed installers to ‘unroll the fabric into a whirl’, but for a work made of bamboo and woven wool, and without photos, this was a confusing direction. Another sculpture — Nindityo Adipurnomo’s Introversion (April the twenty-first) — had numerous ‘spare parts’ generously provided by the artist and safely stored — but with insufficient documentation to easily determine what was required for installation and what was not. Without clear instructions or detailed images, works like these have a very real risk of losing their intended physicality and meaning. Curators might also find it challenging to propose them for exhibition because there are too many unknowns.
Installing ‘Introversion (April the twenty-first)’
Watch | Installation time-lapse
Our photographers are capturing every artwork in the QAGOMA Collection, including works so large that a whole gallery space has been transformed into a photographic studio to accommodate them. Watch as we install Nindityo Adipurnomo’s Introversion (April the twenty-first) 1995-96
To solve these unknowns and ensure the digitisation team can accurately record each work of art, the Collection Online conservator and registrar have spent hours in the Gallery’s records and archives, particularly those held in the QAGOMA Research Library, including catalogues, artists’ files and acquisition records. An archive has also been kept of past exhibitions, which has been a useful source of photos, slides and floor plans that have provided valuable information. For works collected in the era before computers and electronic databases, a hand-drawn mud map or a fax from an artist’s studio with a rough diagram might be the piece of information that helps to solve an installation puzzle. When the paper trail ends, the team is fortunate to be able to draw on the corporate memory of current and former staff members, and even artist’s themselves, who have generously given their time to work through a range of installation and technical questions. All this information is now being recorded — historical records are being scanned, discrepancies clarified, mysteries solved and documentation updated.
While the core goal of the Collection Online project is to capture high resolution digital images of all works of art in the Collection, one of the most valuable side benefits has been the review and refinement of technical documentation for the Collection. Collating old files, confirming artists’ intentions, and incorporating this information into the Gallery’s permanent record-keeping systems, not only makes the instructions readily available for the future but also conserves both the tangible and intangible aspects of works of art.
Rhiannon Walker is Associate Conservator, Collection Online, QAGOMA
Paul Taylor has been a member of the Gallery’s Board of Trustees and Foundation Committee since 2017 and is currently Chair of the QAGOMA Collection Online Campaign, which is the focus of this year’s Foundation Appeal.
Through the Taylor Family Collection, Paul Taylor has generously helped the Gallery to secure several major artworks. These include Arthur Boyd’s Sleeping bride 1957–58 in memory of his parents, one of the most significant individual works of Australian art ever donated to the Collection; Gija artist Paddy Bedford’s Wirwirji – Police Hole 2004; and James Turrell’s Night Life2018 architectural light installation at GOMA.
Lucy Whyte interviewed Paul about the campaign to digitise the Collection.
What inspired you to lead the fundraising effort to help unlock the QAGOMA Collection?
Digitising the Collection will transform our galleries, exhibitions, and educational and curatorial content. It will have one of the most positive impacts on audience experience and engagement that has ever been delivered by a project at QAGOMA. At the moment, only ten per cent of the Collection can be on show in the physical galleries. Once digitised, we will be able to make the Collection available online 100 per cent of the time to 100 per cent of Queenslanders.
This transformation means not just the ability, for the first time, to exhibit the Collection so fully, but also to integrate online content with real-world exhibitions and link with enhanced and expanded curatorial content from QAGOMA and around the world. We will be able to deliver content that offers tailored experiences for audiences with disability, reaches remotely based audiences, fosters greater research and education, and delivers an enhanced cultural experience for all.
The more I think about what is possible, after we have digitised the Collection, the more I am excited about what QAGOMA can deliver for the community. This is what has inspired me to lead the fundraising effort.
In recent years, cultural institutions around the world have focused attention on making their collections more digitally accessible. How does QAGOMA’s project compare and why is the timing right to undertake the initiative now?
This project, which is part of the Gallery’s larger Digital Transformation Initiative, aims to position QAGOMA as a leader in digital content creation and access so as to maintain our position as one of the world’s most visited public galleries and a destination museum. QAGOMA is renowned for the exciting ways it connects people with the power of art and ideas — as it evolves, this project will place the Gallery amongst the best in the world.
In recent years, the software platforms required to expand access to the Collection have improved exponentially in both quality and interconnectivity. At the same time, the challenges the world has faced over the past year have sharply highlighted the imperative to expand QAGOMA’s digital offering. QAGOMA wants to ensure that everyone can experience the Collection and its interpretative content from any location, at any time. Institutions and corporations around the world are currently examining their digital infrastructure and strategy and QAGOMA is no different. This is a project of huge benefits and its time is now.
What would you tell someone considering giving to the Appeal?
When I contribute to a charity or a fundraising campaign, I am always focused on the size of the impact for the money I am donating. We are hoping to raise $5 million to digitise the QAGOMA Collection, which we believe will deliver tremendous benefits to the community. The Appeal will help all Queenslanders access their world-class Collection and will allow us to transform and enhance audience engagement and experience. QAGOMA is the soul of the cultural and artistic community in Queensland so I encourage everyone to consider donating to the Appeal.
Lucy Whyte is Bequest and Communications Officer, QAGOMA Foundation. She interviewed Paul Taylor in March 2021.
Featured image: Paul Taylor with Victor Meertens’s sculptural work Delvig 1990, a gift of the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre 1999, installed for digitisation in Gallery 14, QAG, March 2021 / Photograph: Katie Bennett © QAGOMA
The QAGOMA Digital Transformation Initiative is a wide-reaching program that aims to position the Gallery as leader in digital content creation. Several years in the making, the project was greatly accelerated by the COVID-19 lockdown. Here, Morgan Strong demystifies this substantial undertaking.
So, what does ‘Digital Transformation’ mean? Frequently, this is an umbrella term for updating software, digitising processes, replacing manual workflows, leveraging new opportunities . . . but really, it’s simply about integrating digital into all areas of what an organisation does. In the Gallery’s context, and for our audiences, this means three main things: making our Collection more available and accessible; embracing digital as a communication tool via virtual and digital channels; and aligning what we do as an organisation with the many opportunities afforded by being digital.
Watch as we capture Nindityo Adipurnomo’s ‘Introversion’
We can represent artworks at such a resolution that when you see the work on a device, you’ll be able to see it in a lot more detail than ever before. The Collection will be more easily discoverable and offer you similar works for inspiration. We can share multiple voices and interpretations and make them more accessible. A digital transformation for the Gallery means bringing the Collection to members of communities where a digital connection can bridge an existing gap. Also, back of house, it means more processes can be automated, so there’s more time to do the important work of curating, designing, expanding and publishing on the Collection, and to reflect on and embrace what art means to the state. To make this happen, we’re embarking on this major project of digitising the Collection, which is the focus of this year’s QAGOMA Foundation Appeal.
If we have digital content for the whole Collection, the publishing capabilities are endless. The ability to cross-pollinate this data with other sources will enable new and novel meaning. We are also embarking on improving the administrative systems that we rely on to do our jobs: currently, our Collection Management, Digital Asset Management, Constituent Relationship Management and internal collaboration systems have either been upgraded and are in the process of being rolled out, or they’re in active development.
Watch as we capture Joan Miró’s ‘Monument’
Joan Miró, Spain 1893-1983 / Monument cast 1970 / Bronze with black patina; base of welded steel, painted black / 289.5 x 103 x 65cm / Purchased 1983. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Joan Miró/Succession Miró/ADAGP/Copyright Agency / Timelapse: Lee Wilkes © QAGOMA
Perhaps most importantly, the Digital Transformation Initiative has also resulted in new products and new digital ways of sharing our Collection: during the lockdown of 2020, we launched an early ‘beta’ or experimental Collection Search site to gather feedback in determining its most important elements and to show how we can rapidly publish and iterate on the artworks in the Collection. We have developed new media players that will allow you to see the x-ray and infrared layers of artworks; started creating maps of where works were created; and cross-linked Collection works with related videos, blogs and Artlines articles. We are building mobile tools so you can easily access this content even as you stand in front of the physical object. And we’ve only just begun.
Over the next few years, this foundational work will start making its way into the QAGOMA website, and our digitisation output will start meaning we can produce more and more valuable content for our audiences. It’s an exciting time.
Morgan Strong is Digital Transformation Manager, QAGOMA
Featured image: Photographer Merinda Campbell in the process of capturing Introversion (April the twenty-first) 1995-96 by Nindityo Adipurnomo for the Gallery’s digitisation project / Photograph: Lee Wilkes © QAGOMA
