Exhibition Opening: Archie Moore, Platform 2025, and Skibidi Toilet

Celebrate the opening of our triple exhibition bill marking the first quarter of our fiftieth-anniversary artistic program. Our new shows contend with identity and queerness morality and comic-book violence. 

In 2024 Archie Moore made international headlines winning the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Comic Paintings features work made early in Moore’s career turning on his sharing his first name with the iconic American comic book character. The paintings emphasise the difference of his childhood experiences as an Indigenous Australian with those of the American white middle-class teen. Now having solidified his place in the International arts scene it’s timely to look back on Moore’s artistic roots.

Platform 2025 is the second iteration of our annual commissioning project for emerging Queensland artists. Shannon Toth’s assemblages combine timber confectionary and sound in sticky performances that evoke the body. Jarrod van der Ryken is known for his moody video installations evoking spaces of encounter and discovery dens and beats. Keemon Williams queers tropes of Australianness and indigeneity through comic mischief.

Our screening room will host the first institutional exhibition of Skibidi Toilet (2023–ongoing), the viral YouTube series by Alexey Gerasimov, known as Boom, that has become a Gen Alpha cultural touchstone. This machinima series deploys videogame violence and meme culture on an epic scale. Skibidi Toilet stands as a contemporary manifestation of surrealist film, its dreamlike logic at once both banal and disturbing, its undeniable resonance with young people a red flag for contemporary art. 

Register here: https://events.humanitix.com/quarter-one-exhibition-opening-or-archie-moore-comic-paintings-platform-2025-skibidi-toilet/tickets

Located in the centre of Fortitude Valley—just a stones throw from the James St precinct—the Institute of Modern Art is Australia’s oldest contemporary art space. Free entry. Open Tuesday–Sunday 10am–5pm.

Image: Archie Moore Comic Paintings installation view. Courtesy of The Commercial Gadigal/Sydney.

Host or Publisher Institute of Modern Art