14 QUEENSLAND NATIONS (NATIONS IMAGINED BY RH MATHEWS)

ARCHIE MOORE

Exhibition Dates: 10 October 2014 - 15 November 2014

Moore’s 14 Queensland Nations, a series of fourteen flags exhibited in the Great Court of the University’s St.Lucia campus is based on the work of anthropologist RH Mathews, who in 1900 drew a map of Queensland based on Indigenous language groups. Mathews was one of the first to acknowledge the existence of Aboriginal nations and Moore used his sometimes questionable research as the basis of a work that not only raises questions in relation to his own identity as an Aboriginal (Kamilaroi) man, but also focuses on the many and varied symbolic uses of flags for identification, sovereignty, imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, possession, power, protection, law, piracy and independence.

Image: ARCHIE MOORE, Kamilaroi, 2014, digital flag de