Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
Christian Thompson
Collection+
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
Collection+
Christian Thompson
Collection+
Contents
a series of exhibitions drawn from the Gene & Brian Sherman Collection and private and public art collections worldwide.
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Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
Christian Thompson Curated by Alana Kushnir
23 October – 12 December 2015
Preface Gene Sherman
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Christian Thompson: Fashionable Art Alison Kubler and Mitchell Oakley Smith
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Alana Kushnir and Christian Thompson in Conversation
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Colour Plates
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List of Works
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Christian Thompson: Biography
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Contributors
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Acknowledgements
SCAF Project 29
Preface Gene Sherman Chairman and Executive Director Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
As Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation’s Collection+ suite of exhibitions gathers steam, critical mass provides increasing opportunities for assessment. Originally conceived as an opportunity to open the Gene & Brian Sherman Collection to the broader public, the series has, over time, achieved amplified goals. Emerging and experienced curators have hopefully benefitted from the project in tandem with their selected artists. These vignette exhibitions, whose brief includes the investigation of worldwide collections, have given said curators unexpected opportunities. Medium-to-large scale exhibitions clearly allow curators multiple inclusions and ambitious explorations of connections amongst works. Collection+ shows require the widest possible research whilst simultaneously demanding succinct thinking and highly disciplined editing. My hope is that the initial impetus for the series – offering a glimpse of our almost half-century of contemporary collecting – has, in addition to this primary goal, encouraged curatorial discipline and innovation. Since the series’ inception in May 2013, curators have selected artists Chiharu Shiota (Japan), Sopheap Pich (Cambodia), Pinaree Sanpitak (Thailand) and Shaun Gladwell (Australia). Collection+: Christian Thompson brings the series to its fifth instalment, and to the suite’s first Indigenous Australian artist. Curators have ranged from the venerable former Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art Museum Director, Doug Hall, through Phnom
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Penh-based Erin Gleeson, to senior independent curator Jasmin Stephens. Iteration four, Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, was conceived by a European curatorial duo. Dr Barbara Polla and Professor Paul Ardenne were unusually offered an expanded ‘canvas’ – the University of New South Wales’ newly built three part gallery. With Gladwell’s significant new commission on exhibition at SCAF – this particular Collection+ iteration was amplified both in terms of scope and scale. Emerging curator Alana Kushnir now takes up the baton. Nationally or internationally based, experienced or relatively new to the task, the brief remains identical: curators are asked to select a single artist and a limited number of works from the Gene & Brian Sherman Collection – with their ultimate goal the exploration of other collections worldwide marked by an interest in the same artist. An interest in public and private collecting patterns matches, therefore, the more traditional emphasis on the artist. During Sherman Galleries’ commercial days (1986–2007) I became interested in incorporating Christian Thompson into our represented group of artists, where he would have sat comfortably beside Gordon Bennett and Clinton Nain – two urban Indigenous artists, senior and emerging respectively, whose work, I believe, occupies a critical place in the pantheon of Australian contemporary art.1 Stills Gallery, owned and directed by the Freedman family, our closest relatives in Australia, had a prior interest in Thompson, and therefore our relationship with the artist blossomed in rather different ways. With the gallerist–artist relationship forgone, his work became one of my focussed research areas and an important body of his work, partly shown in Collection+: Christian Thompson, ultimately entered our collection. What drew me to Thompson’s practice? My strong and longstanding passion for fashion meshes with the artist’s deeply thoughtthrough costume play. Alison Kubler and Mitchell Oakley Smith’s essay in this catalogue admirably expands on this aspect of Thompson’s practice. As a result of this and several other overlapping interests – including a mutual, deeply felt loyalty to social justice issues and a need to foreground society’s marginalised – my personal connection with the artist’s practice intensified over the years.
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Meeting Christian finally, over breakfast in London’s Soho Hotel during the course of his Oxford University years, my early instincts were confirmed. I found an articulate, charming, mindful, highly creative young man whose work and persona merged seamlessly. Alana Kushnir’s choice of Christian Thompson’s work for SCAF’s fifth iteration of Collection+ could not have been more welcome. As a lawyer turned curator interested in the protection of creative endeavour, Alana’s own trajectory clearly encouraged her artist selection. We congratulate them both and look forward to a meaningful and illuminating collaboration. 1. Gordon Bennett sadly passed away on 3 June 2014. The significance of his work remains widely recognised. Clinton Nain exhibited most actively in the late 1990s and early 2000s; his work is held in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
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Christian Thompson: Fashionable Art Alison Kubler and Mitchell Oakley Smith
For centuries, the artwork of Indigenous Australians has been mined, replicated and exploited aesthetically with relatively few repercussions. The appropriation, and at times cultural theft, of Aboriginal culture has occurred across an array of disciplines, and in fashion in particular. The contemporary fashion industry has become notorious for its reproduction – frequently unlicensed and unauthorised – of existing artworks and art genres, including the cultural iconography specific to indigenous cultures. Since the turn of the millennium alone, countless fashion trends have emerged that appropriate cultural dress; consider the popularity of the keffiyeh (a scarf typically worn by Arab men) or the ubiquity of the Navajo feathered headdress worn by festival goers to Coachella and such as a sign of bohemian rock n’ roll chic. The insensitive adoption of the feathered headpieces, sacred to native Americans, as fashionable high street accessories saw them ultimately banned from subsequent music events. In 2012 American high fashion label Rodarte, made up of sibling designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, reproduced Australian Indigenous work by the late Papunya Tula artist Benny Tjangala in their autumn/winter collection of frilled dresses and leather skirts and tops. Although it later emerged that the designers had licensed the artworks (consisting of hand prints and dot paintings), they failed to acknowledge the original creator in the final presentation of the collection, speaking generally about the inspiration of the Australian bush, which incidentally they had never visited. Seemingly a world away from the New York City catwalk, the collection drew the ire of many commentators and Indigenous Australian spokespeople,
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among them Megan Davis, an Indigenous Australian lawyer and an expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The designers were compelled to apologise for their lack of cultural sensitivity in applying traditional Aboriginal motifs to clothing, although presumably the incident did not affect them commercially. Indigenous Australian artist Christian Thompson was sufficiently moved by the backlash to pen a controversial opinion piece for (Inside) magazine, in which he celebrated the use of the designs: What we see in this remarkable symbolic convergence of two esteemed forms of high art production is an engagement of performance as a genre that imbues a new sense of cultural providence from both the art and fashion context. On one hand, we have traditional painting from the world’s oldest continuous living culture and on the other, the elite production of wearable couture gracing the New York catwalks.1 Thompson is a Bidjara man (indigenous to central southwestern Queensland) of mixed English descent, and is currently based in London, having been awarded the inaugural Charlie Perkins Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, where he is earning his Doctorate of Philosophy in Fine Art – one of the first two Indigenous Australian people to attend the prestigious university in its 900-year history. Although Thompson’s work engages with traditional Aboriginal imagery and subjects, his practice and profile extends beyond his heritage. He has said, ‘I definitely see the world through the eyes of my mixed heritage, and while I think of myself as a contemporary artist first, I am constantly remixing and reconfiguring the world through my lived experiences. So my background is a very important part of that.’2 What Thompson recognised in his writing about Rodarte was that this merging of cultural platforms provided occasion for a new kind of recognition of Indigenous art, which is no less valid than the recognition it is regularly afforded in the white-cube context. Indeed, Thompson suggests that clothing may in fact be the perfect context for such a cultural
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convergence. Body painting is, after all, a key aspect of Indigenous culture, and much traditional and contemporary Indigenous painting contains representations of ‘bodylines’ on canvas. Thompson wrote, I contend that these types of consensual collaborations are essential in gaining autonomous recognition and financial independence while also working to transcend the polarisation of the complex multicultural face of modern Aboriginal Australia. Tjangala’s work defies attempts to be drawn into provincial arguments about ownership and returns our art back to its rightful place – as a revered and influential form of contemporary art production. It demonstrates our ability as a culture to adapt and change form and to find creative and exciting platforms to share our experience and culture with the world, thus contributing to a global discourse.3 Thompson sees a possibility in this kind of collaboration for Aboriginal art to achieve greater contemporary influence, acknowledging that the intersection between Indigenous art and fashion can be beneficial to both parties. For the former, it affords a platform – global in the case of the Rodarte collection – upon which to showcase work not often seen outside of the gallery in Australia, providing new meaning when worn in the context of the body. As well, the commercial gain can often be an important income stream for an artist or community. For the fashion brand, it imbues the designer’s clothing with a newfound artistry, adding cultural relevance to the garments. However, it is obvious from Thompson’s own fashion-related art practice that he is also acutely aware of the potential for symbols to be misused. Cut loose from context, the complexity of Indigenous iconography is often misread as decorative design. Thompson has played on fashion’s appropriation of Indigenous tropes in his own practice to explore this concept of context and the construction of meaning set adrift. His photographs have alluded to popular culture’s adoption of Australian icons such as kangaroos, koalas and
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boomerangs (think 1980s knitwear), presenting collectively kitsch symbols of Australiana. One of Thompson’s most significant series of works is Blak’s palace, 2002. The woollen Tiwi jumper, 2002, is a stand out work, which, with its excessively long arms, mocks Australian fashion’s predilection for turning Aboriginal symbols into clichés of pastel colours, shapes and embellishment. The work is reminiscent of those jumpers regularly seen in the tourist market, particularly during the kitsch era of the 1980s. Thompson remembers them well: ‘People like me who grew up in the 1980s in regional Australia, well there was material like these jumpers being made – suggestive of Aboriginal culture but definitely not representative of what Aboriginal culture meant to Aboriginal people.’4 By distorting this highly recognisable fashion item, Thompson thwarts our recognition of the garment, proposing an alternative narrative for Aboriginal culture separate to the misrepresentation of tourist-directed garb. Thompson says of his series: I had … thought about misrepresentation and how, in a sense, we are burdened by that, because Aboriginal people are perpetually trying to justify our existence. It’s because of this paraphernalia, which in its superficial form seems quite harmless but historically has been quite damaging, because of how it has romanticised Aboriginal people. I think that’s probably one of the worst things that’s happened.5 Indigenous Australian activist and scholar Marcia Langton – a friend of Thompson’s – appears in the artist’s Blak’s palace series, an acknowledgement of sorts of Langton’s unwavering support of young creative Indigenous Australians. The humble garment Thompson cloaks her in, similar to Tiwi jumper with its ridiculously long arms, riffs on Australia’s colonial reputation as a nation ‘made off the sheep’s back’. This and other works in the series ironically reference the jingoistic attitudes associated with native symbols such as the boxing kangaroo, which have been misappropriated by popular culture. In the Ayers Rock jumper, for example, Thompson employs images of that most contested of sites, Uluru – which is even today traversed by tourists, despite longstanding appeals from the Indigenous community.
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In Thompson’s images the jumpers take on a political potency that belies the humility of their construction. They are handmade, recalling the make-at-home patterns of the 1980s that could be rolled out for the whole family. They are imbued with collective memories of awkward knits made by grandmothers and mothers in a spirit of nationalism, but which, with the benefit of hindsight, take on a jingoistic cringe-worthy quality. But here’s the rub: we have come full circle in our acceptance or appreciation of these culturally shaky objects. Jumpers such as these are collectible and worn with a healthy dose of irony; they are once again ‘in vogue’. This important series of photographs by Thompson brings to mind the recent fashion collaboration between Australian label Romance Was Born and designer Jenny Kee, where the young designers revisited Kee’s famous designs of primary colours, bright brushstrokes and patterns and reissued the 1980s fashion legend’s iconic printed scarves and knitwear, claiming that Romance Was Born ‘see it with fresh eyes’.6 Just as this was a case of ‘of-the-moment’ designers imbuing an older designer’s name with a newfound currency for a younger audience, it was also an opportunity for their own clothing line to enjoy a certain sanctioned engagement with cultural history. The collaboration went against the grain by embracing and therefore challenging the aforementioned condition of cultural cringe. In recognition of contemporary fashion embracing its own past, Kee has, too, subsequently reissued her own knitwear designs. Thompson’s adoption of the same kitschy motifs within his work goes even further, pointing to a contemporary willingness to not only embrace the now-daggy past, as Langton physically does with Thompson’s knitted jumper in one image, but reclaim the spirituality of these symbolic animals and motifs within Aboriginal culture for himself. Clothing, and fashion more broadly, is an elaborate art form. In an everyday context it is used as both a tool for self-representation and the construction of identity; clothing can be both armour and artifice; the outward manifestation of self or the opposite; costume worn to reveal, or conceal and confuse. Fashion designers such as Maison Martin Margiela, Walter Van Beirendonck, Bernhard Willhelm, Romance Was Born, Viktor & Rolf
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and Hussein Chalayan, to name just a few, have explored the possibility for clothing to transform the wearer. Avant garde fashion’s exploration of costume and artifice exemplifies art and fashion’s willing cross-pollination. Van Beirendonck’s eponymous label, with its exaggerated silhouettes and playful prints, is characterised by its eccentricity and almost surreal approach to clothing. The designer’s practice emerged from the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp where he studied fine arts and, like many members of the socalled Antwerp Six that Van Beirendonck followed, his work eschews fashion trends, stands outside of the fashion system and remains independent of commercial imperatives. Like Thompson’s series, his collections are rich with allusions to politics and social issues, and have the ability to transform the individual wearer. Just as fashion designers are exploring the capacity of fashion to transform, so have artists employed fashion in all its forms for centuries in order to talk about the body and to unpack identity and its construction. Given fashion’s newly acquired status as a form of cultural entertainment, in large part due to the predominance of image-driven digital media, it is perhaps unsurprising that many contemporary visual artists should have such a serious, critical engagement with it as a subject. American Nick Cave is one such artist whose practice incorporates performance, dance and sculpture as expressed via costumes that transfigure the human form. His trademark sound suits are a hybrid of folk and drag, interrogating ritual and ceremony in contemporary and traditional cultures. Thompson’s practice – consisting of photography, video and performance – frequently presents characters, typically himself, in various forms of dress or decoration; they are, in essence, a still record of a performative form imbued with the multiple layers of cultural, historical and social meanings invoked by the artist. ‘I tend to build images, rather than take photos or videos, and I use my body as an armature to do that,’ he has said.7 American artist Cindy Sherman uses costume to construct photographic works about self and identity as seen through the lens of popular cinematic tropes. Artist Vanessa Beecroft, too, maintains a dialogue with fashion’s construction and manipulation of beauty, which informs her renowned
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performance and installation practice. Beecroft’s memorable performances include various iterations on the theme of beauty in which naked models (titled with her initials and a number, for example VB23, and performed by models chosen because they resemble the artist) are assembled en masse and directed to stand silently and unmoving for several hours while viewers move around them. While Thompson’s early photographs explore daggy Australiana, his work is just as relevant to this lineage of beauty and celebrity. In one series of photographs, The Gates of Tambo, 2004, Thompson dressed up as other artists – such as Tracey Moffatt, arguably Australia’s most internationally successful Indigenous artist, and Andy Warhol – alluding to the cult of celebrity that is associated with contemporary artistic success. That Thompson should insert himself into such a canon demonstrates an intimate understanding of the economic power of celebrity in today’s artistic context. In contrast to these very readable personas, the Australian Graffiti series, 2007–8, saw Thompson use native flower arrangements as elaborate masks, shrouding and obscuring his face beneath flowerfilled hooded jumpers. A more recent series of Thompson’s, We Bury Our Own, 2012, followed his excavation of the photography archive of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Here, Thompson adorned and obscured himself with ethnographic specimens of the nineteenth century to explore the possibility of a spiritual repatriation, inserting himself into the annals of Indigenous Australian history. In these works, Thompson’s practice intersects with a larger Australian contemporary art history. He locates his work geographically and metaphorically in his homeland while he speaks to universal ideas of identity and self. Thompson’s identity-obscuring flower crowns and wild makeup chimes with a number of contemporary artists using costume to great effect. Brisbane artist Gerwyn Davies photographs himself in homemade costumes consisting of such items as steel wool or post-it notes, costumes that disguise the wearer, offering a kind of self-portraiture in absence of the self, an ultimate obfuscation of self-identity. British artist Grayson Perry has used cross-dressing to talk about gender and identity, as has Australian Luke Roberts, whose costumes allow him to take on the persona
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of other artists of import or figures in history, and most famously his alter ego Pope Alice. Indigenous artist Eric Bridgeman also uses costume and clothing to critique representations of race in Australia, as does artist Chantal Fraser, who plays with familiar tropes such as the burqa and niqab and the stereotypes associated with them, to make self-portraits that confound and confuse, implicating the viewer in the stereotypes she creates. Thompson is among an exciting breed of practitioners who exploit the common language of fashion and fashion photography to transcend strictures of race, sexuality and class, and to inhabit the world without identity or, rather, with a new identity. Until the past decade or two, it was rare to find the art of dress so prominently and regularly considered within the broader hierarchy of fine art practice. Recent developments not only evidence a collapse of traditions but acknowledge the inherent cultural value of what we wear. But while such cross-pollination can be mutually beneficial, we should not forget that fashion is largely a white construction. It is only very recently that Africa has emerged as a non-first world player in the business of fashion. India and China are the engine rooms of fashion, but it is a privileged white world that dominates. In Australia there is very little serious fashion emerging from Indigenous quarters. Thompson’s work posits a place for Indigenous culture within a western fashion framework by employing western fashion tropes, but this time around there’s no need for irony. It’s Aboriginal identity on Aboriginal terms. 1. Christian Thompson, (Inside) Interior Design Review, issue 72, July/August 2012. 2. Christian Thompson in Alex Speed, ‘Christian Thompson’s Body of Work’, The Australian, 11 May 2013. 3. Christian Thompson, (Inside) Interior Design Review, issue 72, July/August 2012. 4. Artist’s statement, 2002, National Gallery of Australia, www.nga.gov.au/exhibition/tactility/Detail.cfm?IRN=120311. 5. Christian Thompson in Kyla McFarlane, ‘Evidence of Art’, The Age, 7 August 2004. 6. 'Romance Was Born and Jenny Kee: A Fine Romance', Vogue Australia, July 2012. 7. Christian Thompson in Alex Speed, ‘Christian Thompson’s Body of Work’, The Australian, 11 May 2013.
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Alana Kushnir and Christian Thompson in Conversation
Alana Kushnir: Forgiveness of Land from your 2012 We Bury Our Own series is a part of the Gene & Brian Sherman Collection and the curatorial starting point for Collection+: Christian Thompson. One of the reasons I selected Forgiveness of Land from the collection was because I was interested in how the work and the series came about. I understand that with We Bury Our Own you responded to a collection of early Australian photographs from the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. The impetus for the series seems to resonate with the rationale of the Collection+ exhibitions, which is to provide a personalised, intimate curatorial perspective on selected works in the Gene & Brian Sherman Collection, as well as other private and public collections. Why did you decide to look into the Pitt Rivers Museum Collection and respond to these photographs? Christian Thompson: It was part of my research proposal to look at new ways to respond to Australian material culture in the Pitt Rivers Museum Collection, which is a world-renowned museum. It just so happened that upon taking up my doctoral candidature at Trinity College, University of Oxford, an Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded project began, which was focussed on the repatriation of nineteenth-century Australian photographs held in collections in England, France, The Netherlands and Germany. The project was led by Jane Lydon of the University of Western Australia, and Christopher Morton, Curator of Photographs at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
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Chris invited me to create a body of work as a kind of visual response to this collection. It was really amazing timing and I feel in some way as if the collection summoned me. It could be said that you were taking what is more traditionally thought to be the role of a curator – to work with a collection of existing works of art or cultural objects – notwithstanding that the said nineteenth-century photographs do not actually appear in your resulting works. Do you agree? Is there a curatorial approach to working with content in your practice? There is a research methodology to my project which is based on how others have historically executed practical and theoretical fine art dissertations. I’m not sure I would liken it to a curatorial approach in the sense that I am producing the work and also contextualising it within an art-historical context. I wanted to circumnavigate certain issues that are culturally sensitive for our communities. I also wanted to think about how collections can be harnessed in a way that empowers people today to consider such histories. I understand that as part of your Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine Art), which you are completing at Oxford University, you also considered other artists who worked with collections. Can you expand on this research interest of yours? Who are some of these artists and did any of them in particular influence your work? It was important for me to gain a broader knowledge of artists who have worked with museum collections, from Marcel Duchamp through to Andy Warhol, James Luna, Marina Abramović (who also worked with the Pitt Rivers Museum Collection), Renée Green, Hans Haacke and Fred Wilson. This history includes an artistic lineage that We Bury Our Own has become part of; it was essential to place my experience working with the Pitt Rivers Museum into a larger conversation and to demonstrate how my work has contributed to this discourse. Interestingly, We Bury Our Own has become a research focus for art historians and anthropologists at the University of
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Oxford. It has surpassed my expectations and I’m very proud of this body of work. I’m glad that it has been able to reach beyond the museum and into other contexts – the series has been shown all over the world: London, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Virginia, Oxford and New York. I think there is a certain element of ambiguity that comes with the ownership of an artwork or cultural object by a collection. After all, what exactly does a collection own the right to? Is it merely a right to possess the object? And if one gains entitlement to such a right, then what does that mean for that object? In working with the photographs from the Pitt Rivers Museum Collection you are working with material that is owned by the collection. What do you think the Pitt Rivers Museum owns the right to, with respect to these photographs? Furthermore, do you think that, in being a part of a collection, the photographs have been affected or transformed in some way? The Pitt Rivers Museum is really committed to upholding a strong research engagement with the collection. They are aware of the histories and turbid route via which these objects have come to be in the collection. In terms of ‘owning’ something, the objects come with these complex histories, so owning the object also means owning some kind of responsibility in dealing with the circumstances of such material. The ARC-supported research project, We Bury Our Own, and also the broader research programme at the Pitt Rivers Museum, attempt to negotiate this difficult area. Do you think such questions around ownership and/or possession are present in the actual content of Forgiveness of Land? Perhaps. There were many ideas and influences contributing to We Bury Our Own. I guess the title suggests this idea of never really owning anything. What about your works that are currently in private and public collections – do you think they have been affected or otherwise transformed by being owned by someone or some entity other than yourself?
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I think so. Of course I am glad when the work is appreciated, that it gives something to someone else, enhances their experience of the world. A friend bought a work from my Lost Together series [2008] and to this day she says she just loves it, that it brings her and her family so much happiness – that to me is such a huge reward for being an artist. One of the ongoing characteristics I have observed of your practice is repetition, borne out in the way in which you have presented many of your works within series, as well as in editions and sets of triptychs. The Untitled #1, Untitled #2 and Untitled #3, 2010, triptych of photographs from the King Billy series, as well as the three Untitled (Marcia Langton), 2002, photographs from Blak’s palace, come to mind. While each individual work may not in and of itself suggest this characteristic, the presence of the multiple and the repetition of characters and motifs across your oeuvre appears to be a constant. Would you agree? Why do you present your works as groups of works, as multiples or as editions? Yes, everything is part of a growing visual vocabulary; my work is something that grows with me. There are definitely reoccurring ideas and themes which I think are signatures of my practice; the hoodie and native flowers is one example. This is part of the development of my own oeuvre. A couple of years ago I had a small survey show at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi and it was the first time I saw about ten years of my work in one place and it was quite evident to me that there was this element of inquiry, the evolution and maturing of my own distinct visual language. I was really inspired by the work of Eva Hesse, Rebecca Horn, Christian Boltanski, George Maciunas, Marina Abramović and Joseph Beuys – in fact the Fluxus movement has been hugely influential on me and repetition is something that appears very much in that movement of artists. Editions of your video works Gamu Mambu (Blood Song), 2010, and Dhagunyilangu (Brother), 2011, are held in collections – the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
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(MCA), Sydney, and a private collection respectively. I have noticed that these video works have also been published on YouTube, available for anyone to view at any time. Considering the capabilities of our digital age, together with the ambiguous nature of the notions of ownership and possession I mentioned earlier, do you believe there are unavoidable limitations to exclusive access? What do you think this could mean for the collections which own editions of these video works? I think it’s important for the work to be seen. We live in an age where information moves so quickly; for me it’s about conveying an experience and transporting people somewhere else. I used to be quite precious about this kind of replication but watching it on YouTube is very different to experiencing the work at the MCA in Sydney or as part of the Sydney Biennale, or at the National Museum of China. Your sculpture, He’s Learning the Language, 2013, is quite unique to your oeuvre thus far. It is the first example of your use of 3D-printed cast resin. I think your choice of title is particularly fitting to the experimental nature of the medium of the work – to me it suggests you’re grappling with a new form of representation. At the same time, I understand that you formally trained as a sculptor. Perhaps then, this is a case of you looking backwards, in order to move forwards? Yes, for me it was a return to what I am formally trained in and where my artistic oeuvre really lies. I approach everything from this point of view, whether it’s building pictures, or creating sound works or videos, I come from the position of sculpture. When I decided to embark on He’s Learning the Language it was new territory and a process I was not familiar with, but I needed to make that work at that time. It was made especially for a show at Anna Schwartz Gallery in Sydney. I think the title does ring true with these ideas of learning artistic language and academic language, but also allowing the
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form to speak for itself. For me it is a union of male and female but it is also so evocative of my childhood in the outback desert of Queensland. The crystal forms are Australian – they are beautiful in their own formal sculptural sensibility and are biographical as well. Yes, I am always looking backwards and deciphering how to merge my past with my present. It’s important to do this, reminding one’s self of where one comes from grounds you in the now – it can be emotional and confronting at times. The language of the Bidjara people – your father’s language – is at the heart of many of your works, including a recent video, Refuge, 2014. In this piece, for which you collaborated with musician James Young, you sing an original track in the Bidjara language. While you reanimate a language which is endangered, you choose not to provide the viewer with a translation. Is this because language and the numerous ways in which it is communicated person-to-person – including through voice, expression and bodily action – can convey a multitude of meanings? I’ve always been interested in what we say through intimacy, by not speaking. I have lost my voice at the moment and it is frustrating to not be able to just say what I need to, but there is something in the subtle non-verbal ways we communicate which is very tender. In The Sixth Mile [2006], and in Desert Slippers [2006], and even in HEAT [2010], I focus on the physical language of the body: whether it is my father, brother, niece and nephew combing each other's hair simultaneously; or my father and I greeting each other in Bidjara; or the hair of Charles Perkins’ granddaughters swirling around in desert heat; there is something stoic, empowering and beautiful in the physical that I am drawn to in my work. It’s the same thing with language; I’m not trying to teach the audience Bidjara, I’m asking them to hear it and appreciate the lyricism and beauty of our languages – languages which are often muted, and met with resistance or even violent opposition. You have lived, worked and studied abroad for a number of years now, including completing a Masters of Theatre
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from DasArts Advanced Studies in Performing Arts in Amsterdam (from 2007 to 2010) and taking up a Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine Art) from Oxford University (from 2010). Your explorations of identity in your practice are so deeply tied to Australia – to its varied histories, multiple cultures and linguistic structures – and yet, you have chosen to approach it from afar. Why? I thought I’d had no real intention of leaving Australia, but when I was accepted into DasArts in 2006 I strangely knew that I would be in Europe for a large part of my life. I had travelled a lot since 2000 and had been all over the world. I guess life led me on this journey and here I am almost ten years later and I have been in Europe for most of this time. What has it given me? It has imparted to me a worldview. I see myself and my identity and experiences as belonging to an international discourse – and they do, because that is where I am in the world. A third of my lifetime has been in Europe and with this experience you accumulate a different sense of who you are and where your work belongs. It has allowed me to reflect positively on my life at home and to contribute to the local and international conversation. I have been really fortunate in that way, in the sense that my academic achievements have allowed me entry into the culture of Amsterdam and of England as well. On a personal level, I feel like a more well-rounded person. I have had amazing life experiences that have transformed me and I feel more confident in myself today than I ever have. I’m proud of what I have achieved, and of the humble beginnings I started from. I have also allowed myself to be changed by the world around me – I think that comes from having a father in the Royal Australian Air Force and moving a lot as a child. Change is part of my life; that feeling of being lost or not knowing what to expect is when I truly feel I’m in the moment.
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List of Works
Pages 2–3, 43: Untitled #2 from the King Billy series, 2010 C-type print 100 x 100 cm Edition 2/10 Collection: Toowoomba City Collection, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery Image courtesy the artist and Michael Reid Pages 30–31: Kangaroo and boomerang jumper, 2002 98 per cent acrylic, 2 per cent wool, machine-knit jumper 90 x 748.5 cm Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2002 Image courtesy the artist and Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Page 32: Tiwi jumper, from the Blak’s palace series, 2002 Wool 93.6 cm (centre back length), 387 cm (left sleeve length), 395.5 cm (right sleeve length) Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by Gabrielle Pizzi, Governor, 2002 Pages 33–35: Ayers Rock Jumper, 2002 Textile 85 cm (centre back length), 480 cm (sleeve length) Collection of the artist Image: silversalt photography, 2015
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Page 36: Untitled (Marcia Langton), 2002 Pegasus print colour photograph 55 x 55 cm Edition 1/10 Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2002 Image courtesy the artist and Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Page 37: Untitled (Marcia Langton), 2002 C-type print 55 x 55 cm Edition of 10 Collection of the artist Image courtesy the artist and Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Pages 38–39: Untitled (Marcia Langton), 2002 C-type print 55 x 55 cm Edition 1/10 Collection: Gilbert + Tobin, Sydney Image courtesy the artist and Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Pages 40–41: Untitled (Blue Gum), 2007 C-type print 100 x 100 cm Edition of 10 Collection of the artist Image courtesy the artist and Michael Reid
Page 42: Untitled #1 from the King Billy series, 2010 C-type print 100 x 100 cm Edition 6/10 Collection: Nicola Townsend, Sydney Image courtesy the artist and Michael Reid Pages 44–45: Untitled #3 from the King Billy series, 2010 C-type print 100 x 100 cm Edition 1/10 Collection: Campbell Thomson, Melbourne Image courtesy the artist and Michael Reid Pages 46–47: Forgiveness of Land, 2012 C-type print 100 x 100 cm Collection: Julia Champtaloup and Andrew Rothery, Sydney (edition 2/10); Collection of the artist (edition 3/10); La Trobe University Art Collection, Melbourne (edition 5/10), purchased 2013; Gene & Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney (edition 10/10) Image courtesy the artist and Michael Reid Pages 48–55: Gamu Mambu (Blood Song) (still), 2010 Single-channel digital video, colour, sound, 2:30 mins Edition 1/5 Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, purchased with funds provided by the Coe and Mordant families, 2011
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Pages 56–63: Dhagunyilangu (Brother) (still), 2011 Single-channel digital video, 2:19 mins Edition 1/5 Collection: Andre & Teresa Biet, Sydney Image courtesy the artist and Michael Reid Pages 64–67: All Revolutions are Led by the Young, 2013 Cast resin 85 x 100 x 31 cm Collection of the artist Image: silversalt photography, 2015 Pages 68–77: Tree of Knowledge, 2013 Still from documentation of a performance 12 June 2013, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Videographer: Brad Jarrett © Art Gallery of New South Wales Pages 78–85: Refuge, 2014 Single-channel digital video, 4:19 mins Edition of 5 Unique exhibition edition courtesy of Michael Reid Image courtesy the artist and Michael Reid
Christian Thompson
Christian Thompson is an Australian-born, London-based contemporary artist who explores notions of identity, gender, sexuality, cultural hybridity and history. He was born in 1978 in Gawler, South Australia, and is a Bidjara man of the Kunja Nation of central southwestern Queensland. Formally trained as a sculptor, Thompson came to prominence in the 1990s through a series of performative works and today his multidisciplinary practice spans photography, performance, video, sculpture and sound. Thompson has developed a mode of conceptual portraiture in which he inhabits a range of culturally charged personas, achieved through handcrafted costumes, choreographed poses and orchestrated settings. In 2010, Thompson became one of the first two Aboriginal Australians to be admitted into the University of Oxford in its 900-year history. He is completing a Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine Art) from Trinity College, University of Oxford, Oxford; holds a Master of Theatre from DasArts, Amsterdam School of Arts, Amsterdam; Master of Fine Art (Sculpture) and Honours (Sculpture) from RMIT University, Melbourne; and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Southern Queensland,
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Contributors
Toowoomba. His works are held in major collections in Australia and worldwide. Thompson has exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions including The Other and Me, 2014, The Sharjah Museum, Sharjah; Australia, 2013, 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; Shadow Life, 2012, Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre, Bangkok; and The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, 2010, 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney.
Dr Gene Sherman AM is Chairman and Executive Director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. She was formerly Director and Proprietor of Sherman Galleries, representing major artists across Australia and the AsiaPacific region (1986–2007). She is Adjunct Professor, UNSW Art & Design (formerly COFA); inaugural patron of the MAAS Centre for Fashion; a board member of the Australian Institute of Art History (2013); and a member of the Sydney Contemporary Advisory Council (2014). Dr Sherman is Co-Chair of the Tate Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee; a member of the International Association of Art Critics; and an Asialink Asia Literacy Ambassador. Dr Sherman’s awards include the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2003), Doctorate of Letters honoris causa (University of Sydney, 2008), Member of the Order of Australia (2010) and the B’nai B’rith award (2014).
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Alison Kubler is a freelance curator and writer. She has a double major in Art History from the University of Queensland, Australia, and a Masters in Post-war and Contemporary Art History from Manchester University, England. Kubler is Associate Curator of the University of Queensland Art Museum, where her curatorial projects have included a survey exhibition of the work of Polly Borland, 2012; The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get, 2009; and Neo Goth: Back In Black, 2008. Other projects include Sebastian: Contemporary Realist Painting; Our Place in the Pacific: Recent Work by Adam Cullen; and Quiet Collision: Current Practice and Australian Style at Viafarini and CareOf in Milan. Alison is a co-director of mc/k art consulting. She co-authored, with Mitchell Oakley Smith, Art/ Fashion in the 21st Century (2013, Thames & Hudson). She is a Board Director of the Museum of Brisbane, an Ambassador of the Institute of Modern Art and Associate Editor of Manuscript.
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Mitchell Oakley Smith is the author of the Thames & Hudson publications Fashion: Australian & New Zealand Designers (2010), Interiors: Australia & New Zealand (2011) and, with Alison Kubler, Art/Fashion in the 21st Century (2013), which has to date been published in three languages. He is also the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of magazine and website Manuscript, which covers contemporary art, culture and men’s fashion. Oakley Smith was previously Associate Editor of GQ Australia and GQ Style and has written extensively on contemporary art, fashion and design for Architectural Digest, Art Monthly, ARTAND, where he serves on the Editorial Advisory Board, Belle, Harper’s Bazaar, The Australian, Wish, Vogue Australia and Vogue Living. Oakley Smith was recently engaged as Associate Curator of Public Programs for Fashion Icons: Masterpieces from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, a major exhibition of twentieth and twenty-first century fashion organised by Les Arts Décoratifs, Art Exhibitions Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
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Alana Kushnir is a lawyer and curator. She was recently awarded a Master of Fine Arts in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research is concerned with the relationship between curatorial theory and practice, and how contemporary art, curating and fashion practices intersect with the law. Curated exhibitions and other curatorial projects include Tabularium at Slopes, Melbourne, 2014, Open Curator Studio at Artspace, Sydney and online, 2013, Fourth Plinth: Contemporary Monument at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2012–13, Paraproduction at Boetzelaer|Nispen Gallery, Amsterdam, 2012, TV Dinners at Bus Projects, Melbourne, 2012, and Acoustic Mirrors (as co-curator) at the Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2012. Kushnir has presented her curatorial research in a wide range of contemporary art publications and academic journals, including the Journal of Curatorial Studies and Leonardo Electronic Almanac.
SCAF thanks the artist, Christian Thompson, whose exceptional body of work adds significantly to SCAF’s Collection+ series. Special thanks to Alana Kushnir whose curation succinctly frames the artist’s vision and foregrounds his preoccupations. We gratefully acknowledge the following collectors who have so generously lent their artworks for inclusion in this exhibition: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; La Trobe University Museum of Art, Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery; Andre and Teresa Biet, Sydney; Julia Champtaloup and Andrew Rothery, Sydney; Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers, Sydney; Christian Thompson; Campbell Thomson, Melbourne; Nicola Townsend, Sydney. The following individuals have provided invaluable assistance with this project: Ingrid Button and Kelly Baker, IAS Fine Art Logistics; Samantha Pizzi, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi; Michael Reid.
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Heartfelt thanks to Sam Meers and the Nelson Meers Foundation for their ongoing support of SCAF’s Culture+Ideas programme.
Gene and the SCAF staff are eternally grateful to Brian Sherman for his passionate and unwavering support of SCAF’s activities.
Alana Kushnir would like to thank Gene Sherman and Christian Thompson, two exceptionally inspiring individuals without whom this exhibition would not have been possible. She would also like to express her gratitude to the SCAF team for their support and professionalism, to Samantha Pizzi, Michael Reid and Adam Sims, as well as the numerous private collectors and museums who have assisted with sourcing works for the exhibition, and to Mitchell Oakley Smith and Alison Kubler for their compelling contribution to this catalogue. She would also like to acknowledge the infinite encouragement and support of her husband and family.
Gene & Brian Sherman Collection
As a second-generation collector, Gene Sherman’s interest in acquiring art stems from her father, who avidly collected not only the South African art of his generation but also a modest group of European and American works on paper. Following their marriage in 1968, Gene and Brian continued to visit galleries and meet artists and, with a minimal budget, created the beginnings of what was to become a substantial private art collection. Upon moving to Australia in 1976, the Shermans temporarily stopped collecting art for financial reasons. In 1985, with the international success of Brian Sherman and Laurence Freedman’s Equitilink financial management firm and the establishment of Sherman Galleries under Gene’s direction, the couple was once again in a position to acquire art and the collection grew in leaps and bounds. Now numbering over 800 works, the central focus of the collection became significant and innovative contemporary art from Australia, the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. Comprising painting, sculpture, photography, large-scale installation and video works, the collection includes, inter alia, major international artists such as Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo-Qiang,
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Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
Dinh Q. Lê, Shaun Gladwell and William Kentridge. The collection continues to grow with the acquisition of monumental installation works by Lin Tianmiao, Chiharu Shiota and Ken and Julia Yonetani. Works from the collection have been exhibited at major national and international institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) was established in April 2008 as a not-for-profit organisation to champion research, education and exhibitions of significant and innovative contemporary art primarily from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. SCAF works closely with creative practitioners in commissioning new work and developing exhibitions that energise and respond to the gallery’s four-part complex comprising a large exhibition area, mini ‘out-site’ space, versatile theatre annexe and Zen garden. Extensive projects are developed through partnerships with public art institutions at a regional, state and national level while broad public engagement with contemporary art is fostered through publishing and forum programmes. In addition, Sherman Visual Arts Residency (SVAR), located directly across the road from the gallery, offers a supportive environment and accommodation for visiting artists, filmmakers, architects, writers, curators and scholars. The experience of developing Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) as a respected commercial and educational enterprise within the international art world underpins the Foundation at both a conceptual and practical level. Dr Gene Sherman AM, SCAF
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Chairman and Executive Director, drew on her extensive international networks to establish the Foundation, and initiates and guides its activities in collaboration with an advisory board of respected peers: Andrew Cameron AM, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Sam Meers, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts and Michael Whitworth. SCAF is a member of CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.
Exhibition History
2008
2011
2014
Project 1
Project 10
Project 20
Ai Weiwei: Under Construction In partnership with Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney
Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge Project 11
Fugitive Structures 2014 / AR-MA: Trifolium In association with BVN Donovan Hill
Dinh Q. Lê: Erasure
Project 21
Project 2
Project 12
Jonathan Jones: Untitled (The Tyranny of Distance)
Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall
Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear: Poly
Project 3
Project 22
Jitish Kallat: Aquasaurus
2012 Project 13
HOME: Chien-Chi Chang and Chen Chieh-jen In association with National Art School, Sydney
2009
Janet Laurence: After Eden
Project 23
Project 4
Project 14
The View from Elsewhere In partnership with Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan In-Habit: Project Another Country
Collection+: Pinaree Sanpitak Curated by Jasmin Stephens
Project 15
2015
Project 5
Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture In partnership with National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
Project 24
Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA Project 6
Charwei Tsai: Water, Earth and Air
Project 25
2013 2010
Project 16
Project 7
Fugitive Structures 2013 / Andrew Burns: Crescent House In association with BVN Donovan Hill
Fiona Tan: Coming Home In association with National Art School, Sydney
Project 9
Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids In partnership with Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Collection+: Shaun Gladwell Curated by Dr Barbara Polla and Prof. Paul Ardenne In association with UNSW Galleries Project 26
Collection+: Chiharu Shiota Curated by Doug Hall AM
Yang Zhichao: Chinese Bible Curated by Dr Claire Roberts as part of Go East: The Gene & Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Art Collection Curated by Suhanya Raffel In partnership with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Project 18
Project 27
Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion In association with National Art School, Sydney
Fugitive Structures 2015 / Sack and Reicher + Muller with Eyal Zur: Sway In association with BVN Architecture
Project 8
Brook Andrew: The Cell In association with Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
Shaun Gladwell: The Lacrima Chair
Olafur Eliasson: The cubic structural evolution project, 2004 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Project 17
Project 19
Collection+: Sopheap Pich Curated by SCAF and Erin Gleeson
Project 28
Hugo Moline and Heidi Axelsen: Owner Occupy Project 29
Collection+: Christian Thompson Curated by Alana Kushnir For project details, visit sherman-scaf.org.au
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Collection + Christian Thompson Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 23 October – 12 December 2015 SCAF Project 29
Published by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 16–20 Goodhope Street Paddington NSW 2021 ABN 25 122 280 200 www.sherman-scaf.org.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Thompson, Christian, 1978– artist. Title: Collection+: Christian Thompson. ISBN: 9780987490995 (paperback) Subjects: Artists, Aboriginal Australian – 21st century – Exhibitions. Art, Modern--21st century--Exhibitions. Other Creators/Contributors: Sherman, Gene; Kushnir, Alana; Kubler, Alison; Oakley Smith, Mitchell; Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, issuing body. Dewey Number: 709.2
© Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Copyright in the text is held by the authors. Copyright in the images is held by the artist unless otherwise indicated. The material in this publication is under copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Where applicable, every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and acknowledge the source material. Errors or omissions are unintentional. Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Chairman, Executive Director Dr Gene Sherman AM General Manager Danielle Devery Exhibitions Manager Michael Moran Communications and Events Manager Sophie Holvast Collections Manager Aaron de Souza Assistant Curator Emily Rolfe Coordinator – Programmes and Publications Rebecca McLean-Chan Executive Assistant to Gene Sherman Hannah Brunskill Exhibition and Catalogue Management Danielle Devery and Michael Moran Advisory Board Andrew Cameron AM, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Sam Meers, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts, Michael Whitworth Media Consultancy [art]iculate Digital Media Consultant Ross Colebatch Partnerships Consultant Bambi Blumberg Design Mark Gowing Studio Editor Marni Williams Proofreader Fiona Egan Printed in Australia by Ligare Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation providing a platform for innovative visual practitioners primarily from Asia, Australia and the Pacific Rim. All donations over $2 are tax deductible and will support our exhibition, educational, public and artist-in-residence programmes.
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 16–20 Goodhope Street, Paddington Sydney NSW 2021 Australia ABN 25 122 280 200 sherman-scaf.org.au
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