Archie Moore’s Heart of Gold at AGSA, Prudence Flint’s The Coat highlight multi-venue festival
If you’ve never been to the Adelaide Museum of Economic Botany, Archie Moore’s new work may seem like it’s always been there. Nestled among dark wood cabinets filled with seeds, tools and notebooks is a new display of eclectic objects, all of which tell the story of one man: Archie’s father, Stanley Moore.
“There was an obvious connection between my father and the gold; he thought he had discovered this deposit on the land where he grew up and worked,” Moore explains. “He would talk about it occasionally, like it was a sign of hope or a promise of a better future.”
The small collection of objects and documents is eclectic at first glance. A map and document with folds and folds, copied with thin sheets of gold. A petiole partially inlaid with copper and gold. A life-size human heart that looks like solid gold. And in a glass cabinet of his own is what looks like an old bucket filled almost to the brim with a yellow liquid.
“He would keep a bucket next to his bed to urinate in, and it would be full in the morning,” Moore explains. “There’s something I don’t know, and maybe he doesn’t know because he’s never been to the doctor, but it’s an early sign of prostate cancer.”
An interesting accompaniment to his Gold Lion-winning work Kith and Kin It was shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale. During Kith and Kin He takes a step back, looking at Moore’s family tree, Remains of My Father (2025) stands out by focusing entirely on one man.
Stanley never found the gold deposits he mentioned, but this exhibition and these objects “are sort of trying to realize his dream,” Moore explains.
Moore is one of 24 artists whose work is currently on display as part of the 2026 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art. Curated by Ellie Buttrose (also curator) Kith and Kin), this year’s incarnation bears the name and theme Yield StrengthThe works are spread across three locations in Adelaide’s CBD.
Counterintuitively, the division of works into different places is one of the strengths of the Biennial; Some artists’ works are found in only one location, while others’ works are scattered throughout the city. Although the bulk of Moore’s work is in the Botanical Gardens, smaller works that pay tribute to the entire exhibition can be found elsewhere.
Melbourne artist Prudence Flint’s paintings are exhibited in two venues. We are standing in front of AGSA, on the lower floor. Cut (2023) and Jacket (2022). Flint explains that the works and pairings were chosen by Buttrose; this caused Flint to see his own works in a new light.
The more one looks at Flint’s paintings, the more surreal they become. “This painting started with his head on the coffee table,” he says, pointing to the painting. Cut. In this picture, a woman with long braids is sitting on the edge of the bed. Behind him is an open jukebox, and in front of him is an open pair of scissors thrown on the ground. There is a slice of watermelon on the table where his head once was. “It’s a process,” Flint explains. “I’ll work on this for a few months.” After “his head returned to where it belonged”, a vase of flowers and a seashell were placed on the table – “and then the watermelon just stayed there”.
During Cut previously viewed, Jacketit was “never properly shown” except at an art fair. In the picture, a woman is looking into the mirror, while a naked man stands in the foreground with his hand on a chair. Flint hasn’t painted a man since. “Whenever I put a man in a painting, it always causes a lot of reactions and weird comments, and it always confuses me,” he explains. “You know, I made their genitals too pink, or too big, or too small. You don’t understand these comments about women.”
He stopped. “Men who paint women have a history. They can have countless female models,” he says, adding that no one asks questions about them. “But a woman paints a picture of a man and everyone wants to know who he is.”
Kirtika Kain’s works, which blend gold, tar and burlap, can be found at both the Samstag Art Museum and the Art Gallery of South Australia. Nathan Beard’s realistic drawings, which gently immerse his own hands and feet in body horror, are also divided into two spaces.
The relationship between a work of art and the space where it is exhibited is an integral part of many works. Garden Designed by Jennifer Mathews, this exhibition splits the entryway into two distinct paths, temporarily shifting the gallery onto farmland and visitors onto farm animals, forcing visitors to make a choice about how to navigate the exhibition. Feed wisely: Preparation Written by: Francis Carmody sees a closed gallery door roped shut and light peeking out through a narrow gap.
In every corner, on every wall, there is something that will challenge you, push you to feel something, and make you look at the ordinary with a new eye.
When I enter a room, a woman behind me shouts, “This place looks like a pile of garbage.” While this might be one of the top three annoying phrases you’ll often overhear at a contemporary art exhibition (alongside “What should this be?” and “I can do that”), he’s actually right. It was meant to be. We’re both standing in front of Erika Scott’s work Necrorealist Sunscreen (2026) consists of discarded man-made garbage. Lamps and office chairs, broken computers, toys, fake plants and mass-produced trinkets melt together to form a hulking, monstrous mass, serving as a pointed reminder of the legacy of plastic and trash left not just to this generation but to the next.
Elizabeth Flux traveled to Adelaide as a guest of AGSA.
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