The Impoverished Aesthetic: Class, Race, and Depression in the Work of Archie Moore
Archie Moore’s “impoverished aesthetic” transforms memory, class, and race into immersive, unsettling worlds. Rejecting the tidy self-disclosure of trauma narratives, his work lingers in ambiguity—neither confession nor critique, but something in between.
By Tara Heffernan
Issue 1, Summer 2023/24
“Paying your respects costs you nothing,” wryly notes a t-shirt designed by Archie Moore. In Australia, well-meaning attempts to address colonial culpability and bear witness to its legacies often paradoxically serve as cathartic rituals, assuaging the white guilt of a predominantly middle-class audience. Along with bureaucratised expressions of remorse, key among these symbolic reparations is the excessive platforming of trauma narratives. Premised on a foundational contradiction — the externalisation of inner turmoil — these politicised acts of self-disclosure are routinely encouraged, only to be mined for ideological edification.
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