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Christian Thompson’s new solo exhibition
by Claire Martin 21 September 2015
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hristian Thompson, one of Australia’s most significant indigenous artists, will be the focus of a new exhibition presented Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) exploring the intersection of art and fashion through his cross-disciplinary work. Presented from October 23 until 12 December 2015, Collection+: Christian Thompson includes photography; sculpture, performance, film and video works that appropriate traditional Aboriginal iconography, often combining fashion-related imagery with original and compelling contemporary art work. Collection+: Christian Thompson is the fifth exhibition in the SCAF Collection+ series that incorporates key works from the Gene & Brian Sherman Collection alongside works loaned from major public and private collections worldwide. For this exhibition, works by Christian Thompson have also been borrowed from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). Thompson’s recent sculptural work, All Revolutions are Led by the Young, 2013 will also be part of the exhibition. The exhibition is curated by emerging Melbourne-based curator and lawyer Alana Kushnir, who has explored concepts of collection and ownership, questioning what it means to truly own or possess something.
Christian Thompson - one of Australia’s most significant Indigenous artists new solo exhibition opens at SCAF 23 Oct Image: UTS
Kushnir has looked into concepts such as the extinction and rediscovery of indigenous languages and the appropriation of indigenous Australian material culture. Kushnir draws a connection between these questions and Thompson’s photographic series, We Bury Our Own, which has been selected from the 900 piece Gene & Brian Sherman Collection. SCAF Executive Director Gene Sherman commented on Thompson’s practice: “A longstanding passion for fashion meshes with the artist’s deeply thought-through costume play. As a result of this and several other overlapping interests – including a need to foreground society’s marginalised – my personal connection with the artist’s practice intensified over the years. ” Thompson recently returned to Sydney after a decade spent in Europe where he completed a Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine Art) from Trinity College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and
a Master of Theatre from DasArts, Amsterdam School of Arts in the Netherlands. Sydney audiences will recognise the artist from his recent residency with Marina Abramovic as part of Kaldor Public Art Projects in Sydney. Thompson’s work was recently featured in ‘24 Frames Per Second’, a major exhibition of moving image works presented at Carriageworks. Thompson has exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions including The Other and Me, 2014, The Sharjah Museum, Sharjah; Australia, 2013, at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; We Bury Our Own, 2012-13, The Pitt Rivers Museum and Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, and Valencian Institute of Modern Art, Valencia; Hijacked III, 2012, QUAD Gallery, Derby, United Kingdom; Shadow Life, 2012, Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre, Bangkok; and 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, 2010, Sydney.
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