In these diminutive works, Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore reconstructs mission churches from Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reserves from the pages of miniature bibles.

On a Mission from God examines the historically significant role the church played in the government’s control and assimilation of First Nations peoples and in the destruction of culture; his act of cutting into a holy book is highly political. Moore is selective about the passages he uses, constructing churches from Luke 12:47: ‘The servant who knows what his master wants him to do, but does not get himself ready and do it, will be punished with a heavy whipping’. This verse relates to the colonial experience of many First Nations peoples in Australia, whereby church-controlled reserves were instrumental in government policies of assimilation that broke down Indigenous social, cultural and linguistic structures.

Feature image: Works by Archie Moore installed at GOMA for ‘A Kind of Library’, May 2023 / Photograph: C Callistemon, QAGOMA