A major self-portrait by internationally renowned contemporary artist Archie Moore (Kamilaroi/Bigambul) is on display at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery for the first time until August 3, 2025.
A celebrated multidisciplinary artist, Moore became the first Australian to win the Venice Biennale's prestigious Golden Lion award for best national participation in 2024.
On tour from the National Portrait Gallery's collection, Mīal is an abstract, conceptual self-portrait that continues Moore's practice of exploring the politics of identity, racism and language systems.
The monumental self-portrait is composed of multiple geometric paintings, each representing a part of the artist's body and replicating shades of his skin colour.
To create the work, Moore used the same technology that makes commercial paint samples to convert scans of his skin into the Pantone colour scale.
Mīal will invite viewers to consider the politics of skin colour and histories of racial profiling.
Supported by the National Portrait Gallery, this is the first exhibition of the Mīal tour, and it is fitting that it is in Moore's hometown of Toowoomba.
Born in Toowoomba, Queensland in 1970, Archie Moore is a Kamilaroi and Bigambul man with British and Scottish heritage.
Moore's conceptual practice encompasses a range of media, including installation, sculpture and photography.
Tracing personal memory and familial histories, Moore interrogates identity through the politics of skin, language revival, notions of home and genealogy. A throughline in his work over three decades is the legacy of colonisation and its ongoing effects on First Nations peoples.
His work was included in the 20th Biennale of Sydney in 2016, and in 2018 Griffith University Art Museum presented the solo exhibition, Archie Moore 1970-2018.
In the same year, Moore undertook the major public art commission, United Neytions, a partnership between the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Sydney Airport. The 28 large flags now installed at Sydney Airport's International Terminal respond to the codified representations of identity and nationhood, and the way national histories can be built upon falsehoods.
In April 2024, Moore became the first Australian artist to win the Venice Biennale's prestigious Golden Lion award for best national participation for his solo presentation in the Australia Pavilion, kith and kin, in which he continues his deep work on language revival, identity and familial connections.
A National Portrait Gallery exhibition.
This exhibition is supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians.
