Christian Thompson’s multidisciplinary practice uses photography, video, sculpture, performance and sound to explore identity, sexuality, gender, race, and memory. Drawing on traditions of performance art and conceptual art, Thompson uses his own body throughout his practice to examine cultural relationships to nature and history. In ‘Sip from the unseen’, Thompson is dressed in a formal white collared shirt. At the same time, he is immersed in the natural world – surrounded by water and native flora. His head fades into the background and his vacant stare is interrupted by reflected lights, which twinkle across his face like stars in the night sky. In this conceptual self-portrait, Thompson explores cultural hybridity while alluding to ideas about spirituality and interconnectedness. Uniformly toned in black and white, this work crosses borders between nature and culture, the earth and the cosmos.
(2023)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.
