Luke Willis Thompson
Residency period
27 November 2014 – 27 January 2015
About
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.
Focus
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.
Public programmes

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Join NTU CCA Singapore Curator-in-Residence Erin Gleeson and Artist-in-Residence Luke Willis Thompson, winner of New Zealand’s acclaimed “Walters Prize” in 2014, as they tackle issues around the histories of objects and its nature in this dynamically led discussion. Gleeson will introduce the practice of late Cambodian artist Svay Ken (1933-2008) and the significance of his paintings. Thompson will present recent projects on looking at the vexed nature of objects and their memorialisation.