Frank Moore (USA)

Museum of Contemporary Art

Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from Terra Foundation for American Art.

A painter and AIDS activist, Frank Moore’s (1953–2002) works are elaborate worlds in which the body and the natural environment are vividly inscribed within one other. Often adorned in elaborate frames—sometimes found, sometimes repurposed, and sometimes assembled by the artist—Moore’s “anti-gardens,” as he called his imagery, evoke the political, social, spiritual, and ecological contradictions at the heart of modern life. As the artist once said: “You cannot have healthy people in an unhealthy environment, and you can’t have a healthy environment where unhealthy—greedy, exploitative—people predominate.”