Meet the Sydney gallerist who won Australia its first Golden Lion

Moore had not previously been represented by a commercial gallery when he signed up with The Commercial in 2012. Before he began working with Rowell, his career was inconsistent, but ever since, he has experienced consistent successes, clear signs of his growing fluency and skill as an established practitioner. As his confidence increased so did his maximal approach. In Archie Moore 1970–2018, his solo exhibition (and autoethnography) at Brisbane’s Griffith University Art Museum in 2018, the artist presented a series of rooms filled with visual, aural and olfactory mnemonic cues from his childhood. In this show, he drew the first public iteration of the ascendancy chart as featured in kith and kin at Venice. In another body of work, Les eaux d’Amoore (2015), the artist worked with a master perfumer to synthesize smells associated with his early life, to produce olfactory portraits of his absent white father, the lesbian sisterhood which centered around an aunt, as well as his first girlfriend. Moore’s practice is atypical in many ways: he does not work in a studio, partly because to a point, he works conceptually. However, as his work becomes ever more maximal, the stagecraft does too. 

Moore is intrepid in his collaborations, consistently daring to work in new ways.  We can see this in his latest creations for the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (curated by another former collaborator, Ellie Buttrose). Remnants Of My Father (2026) is a haunting multi-dimensional portrait of the artist’s father Stanley, whose fractured story is ‘told’ through a series of forged objects and reproduced documents from his estate. Commissioned by precious metals group Pallion, Moore says ʻthe work speaks to (false) hope, (empty) promises, (thin) veneers and (pipe) dreams.ʼ The objects range from the banal to the nostalgic, from a urine-filled bucket to a minerals exploration license rendered in 24-carat gold. A smaller, framed version of this evocative piece will premiere at Art Basel Hong Kong, says Rowell, whose PR skills ensured Moore’s new work received national coverage when it debuted in Adelaide recently.