This portrait is of Dr Christian Thompson AO, a contemporary visual artist and a Bidjara man of the Kunja peoples. The gold across his face is a reference to the lesser-known side of his Chinese-Australian heritage and to ‘New Gold Mountain’ or ‘Xin Jin Shan’, which is how the first wave of Chinese immigrants referred to the Australian gold rushes. Thompson’s paternal grandmother, Harriet Woods, is a direct descendant of the Chinese migrants who immigrated during the Victorian gold rush in the early 1850s. This lineage guides us to Thompson’s current work and shows how the past creates new inspiration.
I am a Naarm/Melbourne-based photographer from King Island, lutruwita/Tasmania working across commercial and art photography.