Christian Thompson (artist)

This article is about the Australian artist. For other people with the same name, see Christian Thompson.

Christian Thompson
Born	Christian Andrew William Thompson 1978 Gawler, South Australia
Nationality	Australian
Education	University of Southern Queensland, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of Oxford

Christian Andrew William Thompson (born 1978) is a notable Australian-born and London-based artist.

Early life and influences

He was born in Gawler, South Australia. He is Bidjara (Indigenous people of central southwestern Queensland) and is of English, Irish, Scandinavian and Sephardic Jewish origins. His paternal heritage is Aboriginal Australian, and his maternal heritage dates back to early colonial and settler background. He currently lives and works between London, United Kingdom and Melbourne, Australia. Thompson's great-great-grandfather is King Billy of Bonny Doon Lorne, who was a senior tribesman of the Bidjara people and reigned for many years over the district.

Thompson had an itinerant childhood following his father's career in the military and lived in Darwin, Wagga Wagga, Raymond Terrace, Toowoomba, and Adelaide, along with his three brothers Marcus, Matthew and Joel. He spent his formative years and family holidays in Barcaldine and in the bush of the Queensland central desert learning the culture and traditions of his father's people from his grandmother and great aunts. Thompson has stated, "Whilst I grew up all over Australia, home is in Western Queensland, where my people are from."

He undertook his Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Southern Queensland, and in 1999 he relocated to Melbourne to undertake his Honours in Fine Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He was an active member of the Melbourne art community, exhibiting his own work and curating various acclaimed exhibitions including 'What's Love Got To Do With It', 'White Hot - New Art from Different Places', 'High Tide - Contemporary Indigenous Photography', 'The Bodies That Were Not Ours', 'No Fun Without You', 'A Lot of Love Going Around' and 'If You only Knew'. He has also undertaken a curatorial internship at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and was on the curatorial group for shows Contemporary Commonwealth at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. He established the MHUL Workshop, an annual workshop for young Indigenous artists from across Australia, and has recently completed a Masters of Theatre at the DasArts, part of the Amsterdam School of the Arts.

Work

He has presented his photographs, videos and performance work in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. He was the first Aboriginal studio artist at Gertrude Street Contemporary Art Spaces 2006–2007, Melbourne. In 2008 he began international residencies at DasArts Advanced Studies for Performing Arts, Amsterdam, and Arizona State University in the United States. His work is held in many public and private collections in Australia and overseas, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, Peter Klein Collection (Eberdingen, Germany), Latrobe Regional Gallery (Morwell, Australia), Aboriginal Art Museum (Utrecht, the Netherlands), Myer Collection (Melbourne, Australia), City of Melbourne Collection, the Pat Corrigan Collection, Artbank, Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton collection and private collections.

During his undergraduate degrees Thompson was heavily inspired by Fluxus artists George Maciunas, Yoko Ono and other artists including Rebecca Horn, Christian Boltanski, Eva Hesse, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Andy Warhol, and Louise Bourgeois. He grew up immersed in music and culture of the 1980s and '90s and identified strongly with punk music, growing up on AC/DC and introduced to Sonic Youth and the Beastie Boys at a very young age. He went on to discover the riot grrrl movement of punk music, connecting to bands like Bikini Kill, Hole, Huggy Bear, Red Aunts, Lunachicks, Bratmobile, Cold Cold Hearts and Babes in Toyland. In his youth he frequented alternative music festivals. Thompson meditated on the relationship between form and performance, and his early works focused on the relationship to the human form. He later moved into photography and video as a means to capture the performative qualities of his textile-based sculptures and elaborate costumes. Thompson states, "My formal training is in sculpture and textiles, so i tend to build pictures the way i would make a sculpture, rather than taking photos."

Thompson has been represented by Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne for over 10 years and is represented by Future Perfect Gallery, Singapore, and Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney. He established himself in 2002 as an up-and-coming talent in the Australian art world with his first series 'Blaks Palace', a series of photographs and giant oversized sweaters. Thompson' most notable works include his series 'Emotional Striptease', 'The Gates of Tambo' and more recently his series 'Australian Graffiti' which are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales and AAMU in Utrecht, the Netherlands. His work deals with the nature of identity as an ever evolving and uncharted terrain, bringing together a variety of seemingly disparate forms and themes. His recent series have garnered him international attention, and he undertook his first major public art project through the Centre for Future Art Research, the City of Phoenix and Arizona State University, Dartmouth University and Massey University International Art Residency, Wellington, New Zealand.

His recent series of photographs 'Lost Together' was made in the Netherlands where Thompson undertook a residency program at DasArts developing his live performance work which brought together his Bidjara and European heritage. Combining classical music, traditional rhythms and lyrical narratives into richly textured, lilting and evocative arrangements. His sound based work is concerned with the innate lyricism of his traditional language and the expression of this in contemporary traditional and experimental musical forms. His work has appeared in various national and international publications including Frieze, Art and Australia, Art Monthly, Realtime, Art Review, Vogue magazine and in Susan Bright's book 'Auto Focus' published by Thames & Hudson. Thompson was also shortlisted and highly commended for the prestigious RAKA Award and in 2011 for the Blake Prize and the Basil Sellers Art Prize.

In 2010, he was awarded the inaugural Charlie Perkins Scholarship to the University of Oxford to undertake his Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine Art). and is one of the first two Australian Aboriginal people to attend Oxford University in its 900-year history.

His work was recently included in the 17th International Biennale of Sydney 'The Beauty of Distance - Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age' curated by David Elliot and the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 'Before and After Science' curated by Sarah Tutton and Charlotte Day. In 2010 he was shortlisted for the Art Gallery of Western Australia Indigenous Art Award along with artists such as Makinti Napanangka, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Judy Watson, Wakartu Cory Surprise and Richard Bell. In 2011 Thompson undertook international residencies at the Australia Council for the Arts Greene street Studio, New York and the Fonderie Darling Studio, Montreal. His work 'Gamu Mambu' from the Sydney Biennale was included in a major exhibition of Korean and Australian art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

Thompson's video work 'Heat' (2010) was included in the National Gallery of Australia's National Indigenous Art Triennial in 2011. In 2014 he became the first recipient of the Massey University international arts residency in New Zealand.

External links

• Official website
• National Gallery of Australia
• Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi
• Michael Reid Gallery
• Future Perfect