In this elegant and unusual exhibition, Queensland-based artist Archie Moore has devised a highly original way to explore themes of Aboriginal dispossession and the colonial past.

An artist of deceptively gentle method, with a deeply acute, personal intent, Moore has worked with a master perfumer to create a selection of beautifully presented ‘perfume portraits’ for Les Eaux d’Amoore. These olfactory offerings venture well beyond the repertoire of traditional perfumes; they evoke the artist’s recollection of the diverse smells of his childhood in South East Queensland. For example ‘Presage’ is the aroma of graphite pencils and paper from his first day of school in an inhospitable, white-dominated society; ‘Sapphistication’, a combination of Brut 33 and rum is the smell of his sophisticated aunties.

Archie Moore is an artist whose sometimes humorous practice interrogates the fragile web of mainstream Australian culture, and the resilience of the (often overlooked) Indigenous history that it rests upon. A 2001 Samstag Scholar, his paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, videos and installations are informed by Aboriginal politics, and address broader concerns of racism, language and interpersonal relationships.

Les Eaux d’Amoore is a journey through someone else’s memory, yet it invites us to consider our own responses to smells that may or may not aid us in understanding the experiences and anxieties of another.

Archie Moore: Les Eaux d’Amoore is a Samstag Museum of Art exhibition in association with the Adelaide Film Festival and supported by the Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Read the Catalogue: Smells Like Teen Spirit by Djon Mundine.