Ritual Intimacy
Dressed in a black hoodie with his face concealed by a spray of red bottle brush flowers, the artist poses from three angles in the manner of a police mug shot. Christian Thompson’s Black Gum 1 – 3, from the Australian graffiti series, is now held in the National Gallery of Australia—and rightly so, for the way it demonstrates Michelangelo’s injunction that a powerful artwork must combine opposing forces. Since the rise of hip-hop and leisure wear in the seventies, the black hoodie has increasingly become associated with criminal activity. Through the juxtaposition of the Callistemon with ‘crimewear’, the artist deftly frames two key aspects of the plight imposed upon Indigenous people in Australia: the appallingly high rates of incarceration and the destruction of sacred land.
Co-curated by Hetti Perkins and Charlotte Day, the survey exhibition Ritual Intimacy reveals how thoroughly Thompson has explored self-portraiture through photography and video. There is an endearing, but nonetheless absurdist posturing at play in his work that takes cues from glamour photography and competitive singing programs, such as Australian Idol. The artist is upfront about this declaration for glamour; the very first work we encounter at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) is the exuberant Untitled #6 from the King Billy series. Here, Thompson models a pastel-coloured suit emblazoned with the pattern of a dot painting. Commissioned by the Dutch, and made in China, the suit is an example of the ruthless pillaging of Indigenous culture that the artist insistently subverts.
Thompson’s eyes reveal a pronounced tension between concealment and revelation. In many of the photographs, his eyes are obscured; by flowers, butterflies, crystals, clothing, hands, or jewelry. Marina Warner explains that