Soho Photography Quarter is a new cultural space aimed focused on highlighting the most exciting contemporary photography.
SPQ’s inaugural exhibition brings together large-scale art, street banners, soundscapes and projections by indigenous Australian artist Dr Christian Thompson AO. His multi-disciplinary approach engages with a variety of mediums, transforming the conventional expectations of portraiture and photography by exploring the relationship between concept and environment, something he calls the ‘anti-portrait’.
“I think of them more as conceptual anti-portraits than self-portraits. My physical head and shoulders simply provide a template, something that I’m just constantly building on top of. I’m always looking for materials: what I’m reading or listening to, where I am. It’s very much connected to that kind of research but it’s also connected to whatever is in the ether at that moment,” he says.
Much of his work considers identity, memory, history cultural hybridity. Among those on display across the city, Being Human Human Being presents work from his ‘King Billy’ and ‘Flower Walls’ series. ‘King Billy’ is a bold display of Thompson’s interest in fusing different elements to create a distinct, often unconventional visual language of his own. Referencing traditional portraiture, fashion photography, advertising, music promos and mug shots, the images show an anonymised figure positioned against a black backdrop.
With ‘Flower Walls’, the artist is literally submerged in Australian native plants and flowers, overlapping and interwoven to create dense, vibrant compositions of colour and texture.
Flower Walls
The work is most vivid after dark when the accompanying video projections are at their clearest, and Thompson’s custom soundscapes don’t have to battle against the city’s own soundscape.
You can explore the works around Soho Photography Quarter, Ramillies Place, London, W1, until November 30.
