Archie Moore’s intensive research has turned up some startling facts about his family.Credit:Janie Barrett
“The phrase kith and kin simply means friends and family but an earlier Old English definition for kith dates from the 1300s and originally meant ‘countrymen’,” says Moore,who is just the second First Nations artist to stage a solo work at the Italian event.
“That struck a chord with me being Indigenous on one side and from England and Scotland on the other side and I just thought maybe people from England in the 1300s had a closer relationship with the land.”
Much of the work will be based on Moore’s deep dive into his own family history over the past four years. He has,he says,become “obsessed” with exploring the stories of his ancestors and how these are enmeshed with the wider history of Australia before and after 1788.
“Archie is looking at his own family history,but it is very much the history of Australia,” says Buttrose. “It’s a history of a continent,it’s a history of a people that goes back 65,000 years. And I think we all can connect in a different way to stories of family.
“Some of us might have First Nations connections,some of us might have convict connections and others might have stories of new migrants trying to establish themselves in a place.”
United Neytions,an earlier work by Archie Moore,installed at Carriageworks.Credit:Sofia Freeman/The Commercial Gallery
Moore was born in Toowoomba and as a youngster heard little about his family history from either parent,his Scottish father or his Indigenous mother.