Luke Willis Thompson
United Kingdom
 

Luke Willis Thompson’s practice explores sites and objects that embody a sense of historical, political or social consequence to trace the fault lines of race and class in his chosen context.

Luke Willis Thompson

27 November 2014 - 27 January 2015

Luke Willis Thompson’s practice explores sites and objects that embody a sense of historical, political or social consequence to trace the fault lines of race and class in his chosen context. Stories of representation, dispossession, and the day-to-day politics of cultural difference collapse into and spiral out of the work His research in Singapore has involved connections between Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Great Britain in an “umbilical” relationship linked by the trade of cotton and other essential goods.


Luke Willis Thompson, 27 November — 27 January 2015, Courtesy the artist.
Luke Willis Thompson, 27 November — 27 January 2015, Courtesy the artist.
Luke Willis Thompson, 27 November — 27 January 2015, Courtesy the artist.

Contributors
Luke Willis Thompson
Luke Willis Thompson
Artist-in-Residence
United Kingdom

Luke Willis Thompson’s (b. 1988, New Zealand) objects are typically both curios drawn from historical blind-spots and markers of, or stand-ins for, very particular personal lived experience. Thompson’s recent projects have focused on politics around the circulation and repatriation of artefacts, and the class-bound art world’s mode of distribution.

Thompson holds an MFA (2010) and a BFA (2009) from the ELAM School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. Selected exhibitions include: Surround Audience, the New Museum Triennial (2015); Foreign Exchange (or the stories you wouldn’t tell a stranger), Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (2014); The 5th Auckland Triennial, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand (2013). Thompson won the acclaimed Auckland Art Gallery’s Walters Prize in 2014.