Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

A lot of people won't be aware of the Venice Biennale, but effectively this is the World Cup for the arts. The awards have the extraordinary title of Golden Lions. In the history of the Venice Biennale, Australia had never won any. In the Venice Biennale just gone, there were three different awards to Australian artists—an award for best national participation at the biennale for Archie Moore, Ellie Buttrose and Creative Australia; a lifetime achievement award for Peter Weir; and a lifetime achievement in theatre award for the Back to Back Theatre in Geelong. These are the most prestigious arts awards in the world. It's the first time Australia has been awarded any, and we were awarded three. A lot of this is the result of not simply things that have happened over the last couple of years but achievements that have built for decades, under governments of each colour.

I will start with Peter Weir. Peter Weir's films are known to all of us—a lifetime of films across many genres, right back to 1974, with The Cars That Ate Paris, then Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously, Dead Poets Society, Fearless, The Truman Show and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. A whole lot of Australians would not know that some of those movies were in fact directed by an Australian, but, as I go through them, all of us would picture scenes, hear lines of dialogue, remember moments. I think we can all be very, very proud of the work of Peter Weir and his role as one of the great storytellers of the world.

Back to Back Theatre is a theatre company that some members of parliament won't know. I've been with the Deputy Prime Minister watching them rehearse in Geelong. Back to Back Theatre is known around the world for engaging actors and artists with disability, through the theatre and the audience, drawing into question some of the assumptions that people would often have as to what is possible in the art form of theatre. They're one of our most successful exports. They will be performing their most acclaimed work, Food Court, when they collect the award in June of this year. Back to Back Theatre is a reminder that disability access in the arts doesn't simply mean access to seats in the audience; it also means access to the stage.

But, for Archie Moore's exhibition, which was curated by Ellie Buttrose and commissioned by Creative Australia, the award wasn't for a lifetime but for a very specific exhibition that was there in the Australian pavilion in Venice. When it's about a specific work, it is harder to describe in words, particularly when we're talking about visual art. You can truly only experience something as immersive as this work if you're in the pavilion, where you can breathe it in and be engulfed by it, but let me try in some small way to share this work to the parliament in words.

It's called kith and kin, meaning 'friends and family'. It depicts a family tree that spans over tens of thousands of years back to the first sunrise. It's not so much a family tree as it is a family galaxy—a great night sky made luminous with vast constellations of genealogy. And, like the light of those stars, the glow of those names could be decades old, or it could be measured in millennia. Yet, like the light of the stars, what might be separated from us by a great distance somehow feels almost close enough to touch. There are gaps in those constellations in the family tree and a black hole—places where memory doesn't reach and the light of those names can't be seen, swallowed into eternity's abyss. It all fills the people who visit the pavilion with wonder and a remarkable sense of the universe that's carried within.

While those names make up the sky above, it's then balanced by those whose lives were cut short. Their story is earthbound, trapped in stacks of reports, mostly of Indigenous Australians who died in custody—black deaths on white paper. And, for those who enter the pavilion and come to stand before those reports, there is between them and the reports a dark pool that offers both the chance and the duty to reflect. As you lean forward to see the police reports at that moment, you catch a glimpse of your own reflection.

You then have the concept of place. Many works of art can be easily moved around to a different plinth on a different wall in a different room, but this artwork, once installed, fuses with the pavilion to become part of it. I remember, when I was first arts minister in 2013, standing with Simon Mordant, one of Australia's great philanthropists, and we unveiled then the design of what was to become the new Australian pavilion in Venice. It is unthinkable to think that this work would have taken the form it did had not so much work gone into that pavilion. This gives us a perfect example of partnership between government, philanthropy and the artist. I want to particularly thank the Belgiorno-Nettis family and Simon and Catriona Mordant for their contribution to this, as well as all the people who made donations to make the Australian pavilion at Venice possible.

An earlier version of Archie Moore's work, part of what inspired the work that has now won this award, is on display now again at the National Gallery of Australia here in Canberra. It's a 2021 work called Family Tree. It traces the roots of family along a large tree against a black backdrop. If you go to the National Gallery to see it, you will get a glimpse of what has now emerged into being recognised as one of the great works of the world.

Kith and kin is a sublime expression of Aboriginality but also of the humanity that ultimately connects us all, and all Australians can be rightly proud of this triumph. In the Venice pavilion, there is at the bottom of the room a window which overlooks the canal behind the pavilion. It lets in some light and a glimpse of what's outside. When Archie Moore won the award, he referred to that, and I'll conclude with his words. He said:

As the water flows through the canals of Venice to the lagoon, then to the Adriatic Sea, it then travels to the oceans and to the rest of the world—enveloping the continent of Australia—connecting us all here on Earth. Aboriginal kinship systems include all living things from the environment in a larger network of relatedness, the land itself can be a mentor or a parent to a child. We are all one and share a responsibility of care to all living things now and into the future.

My sincere congratulations on behalf of the government, and I think indeed on behalf of all of the parliament, to those Australians who have done us proud in being awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.

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