Australian pavilion and New Zealand collective win Golden Lions at the 60th Venice Biennale

The Jury of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation to Australia for Archie Moore’s kith and kin, while the Golden Lion for the Best Artist in the International Exhibition Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere went to the Mataaho Collective from New Zealand.

In the Australian pavilion, Archie Moore worked for months to hand-draw with chalk a monumental First Nations family tree. Thus 65,000 years of history (both recorded and lost) are inscribed on the dark walls as well as on the ceiling, asking viewers to fill in blanks and take in the inherent fragility of this mournful archive. Floating in a moat of water are redacted official State records, reflecting Moore’s intense research as well as the high rates of incarceration of First Nations’ people. This installation stands out for its strong aesthetic, its lyricism, and its invocation of shared loss for occluded pasts. With his inventory of thousands of names, Moore also offers a glimmer of possibility for recuperation.

In their work for the Biennale, the Maori Mataaho Collective has created a luminous woven structure of straps that poetically crisscross the gallery space. Referring to matrilinear traditions of textiles with its womb-like cradle, the installation is both a cosmology and a shelter. Its impressive scale is a feat of engineering that was only made possibly by the collective strength and creativity of the group. The dazzling pattern of shadows cast on the walls and floor harks back to ancestral techniques and gestures to future uses of such techniques.