Yabunbarru

Titled Yabunbarru, this suite of four spectacular images marks a thrilling evolution of the Dr Christian Thompson AO’s practice and arrives at a significant moment in his globally celebrated career.

Building on two decades of creative triumphs, while reflecting on the themes that have threaded through his life’s work, Yabunbarru is a dazzling inversion of the visual dynamics at play in the artist’s iconic flower walls. Once again, Thompson casts himself at the centre of his artfully constructed floral profusions, which appear thick with symbolism and swirl with questions around Australian history, legal fictions, notions of nationhood and intersectional identities.

But where these fecund arrangements once cascaded in abundance, swallowing the figure and flattening the pictorial plane, here, they cloak the artist’s body like armour and throw him into arresting relief against otherwise minimal, boldly coloured backdrops.

A distinctly Bidjara form of rarrk recurs throughout the series, staying true to the style of the artist’s Country and people. Taking its title from the Bidjara word that loosely translates to ‘the other side’, Yabunbarru is a powerful statement of First Nations sovereignty and queer subjectivity.