Born 1988, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand
Lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany

Luke Willis Thompson's work identifies and recovers objects and instances of ordinary life that engender inequities of power, and crystalises wide-reaching complex moral or ethical problems. Thompson's sucu mate 2012–15 arises from his ongoing relationship to a colonial cemetery in Lautoka, Fiji, which is racially and ethnically segregated in its arrangement. In it, a set of headstones marking the plots of indentured labourers are excavated and borrowed from the cemetery and replaced with a renovated set of grave goods designed by the artist and his studio. In the study of this particular genealogy, Thompson's artwork represents an ongoing examination of society's relationship to 'the colour line', and the various forms of racial categorisation and labour exploitation bound up within this term.