Archie Moore Flag

At the inauguration the 60th Venice Biennale in April 2024, Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore became the first Australian to receive the prestigious Golden Lion Award for his major work 'kith and kin', curated by Ellie Buttrose, at the Australia Pavilion. In celebration of this momentous achievement and the continuing legacy of Moore’s practice, this display showcases key works from his 2012 'Flag' series, held in the UTS Art Collection. 

At the core of Moore’s works is a fascination with and subversion of the signs and structures that are used to classify the world. In Flag, Moore holds up the symbolic weight of the Aboriginal flag—widely associated with First Nations’ resistance, sovereignty, and self-determination—to, in his words, “address the compulsion of some to view our First Nations people as one homogenised group”.[i] 

These paintings are part of a series of ten Aboriginal flags that replace the central motif of the sun with other symbols that express political alignments, sexual orientation, religious affiliation and more, including the swastika (Aboriginal Right, 2012), the hammer and sickle (Aboriginal Left, 2012), and the circle-a (Aboriginal Anarchy, 2012), which are now held in the national collection. 

In the series, Moore interrogates the limits of systems of classification through a material process that questions the very nature of painting and the self. Described by the artist as ‘acrylic paint on nothing’, the flags were made using a process similar to hinterglasmalerei, or reverse glass painting. Instead of using a rigid piece of glass, Moore applied acrylic to a flexible piece of rubber, peeling the paint ‘skin’ off once the layers dried and thickened. In this process of separation of a substance from its surface, we are forced to consider where the essence of identity might be located. Is the flag a universal sign, able to absorb all forms of personal and political affiliation? Or is the flag a closed symbol, expressive of the problematic nature of pan-representation? Moore’s own reflections provide direction: “I am uncertain about what I am saying as I am always aware of other readings going on. There are always multiple perspectives—my art is never fully resolved, there is never a determinate position”.[ii]