Archie Moore is a celebrated Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist whose practice is embedded in the politics of identity, racism and language systems. Mīal is a conceptual self portrait that counters expectations of what a self portrait should be. The title Mīal, the Bigambul language word for Aboriginal man, announces this group of geometric monochrome paintings as representative of the artist.
The series probes the politics and codification of skin colour, and the racist historical practice of classifying skin tone to determine legitimacy and proof of a person’s ‘Aboriginality’. Employing the technology used to create commercial paint samples, Moore generated a colour value profile for his own skin by scanning parts of his body, then converted them to the Pantone colour scale. In the gloss finish of automotive paint, the shades of Moore’s skin are a charged signifier of his identity as a Kamilaroi and Bigambul man.
Each painting relates to a part of the artist’s body and is titled in Moore’s ancestral languages. In Bigambul, for example, yāma translates to arm. Kamilaroi has been spoken since time immemorial, with words and phrases in revival through school and community programs. In sounding out words in Bigambul, however, we approximate the pronunciation of what has been a sleeping language, a tragic consequence of colonisation that recent revival efforts seek to redress.
This year, Moore is presenting a solo exhibition in the Australia Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale that continues his deep work on language revival, identity and familial connections.
Purchased 2023
© Archie Moore