Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Black?
Archie Moore’s minimalism plays a formalist trick on a settler audience that sees only an Aboriginal flag, never the painting itself.
My first encounter with both Archie Moore and his work occurred by chance. It was 2017 and Mnemonic Mirror, curated by artists Gary Carsley and Kylie Banyard, had toured to Griffith’s University Art Gallery (now Griffith University Art Museum). I was a volunteer and made a last-minute decision to observe the deinstallation of the exhibition. Archie was there assisting with the removal of Dermis (2012), three brittle sheets of paint. Each sheet was moulded over a wooden dowel, with red and black folded like tea towels, and yellow doubled over into a triangle. The three colours were akin to a deconstructed or abstracted Aboriginal flag. I asked a question about the work, to which Archie sheepishly replied, “I was thinking about painting, about minimalism.”
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