This exhibition showcases highlights from Christian Thompson's 15-year practice, as well as presenting a major new audio-visual commission that involves "wall-to-wall imagery and sound" and incorporates the endangered Bidjara language of the artist's ancestors.
Among the career highlights are one of his 2002 'sculptural knit jumpers', his well-known 2007 Australian Graffiti series (featuring the artist wearing arrangements of native flora), and his acclaimed 2012 series We Bury Our Own (inspired by the Australian photography collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, where he undertook a doctorate of philosophy in Fine Art).
Ritual Intimacy is co-curated by MUMA's Charlotte Day and Thompson's longtime mentor, curator Hetti Perkins.
In his review of the exhibition, Blak Critic Tyson Yunkaporta writes, "Aboriginal land and language are entwined throughout [Ritual Intimacy], in a seamless symbiosis that transcends notions of cultural hybridity or the lazy juxtapositions of traditional and modern that seem to characterise so much contemporary Aboriginal arts practice." Read more here.