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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A theme of institutionalism emerges in this second issue of Memo, its shadow seeming to lurk throughout the pages.
Boxer, scrapper, parry—Archie Moore’s work moves through the tropes assigned to him, resisting, reworking, refusing.
