Design and Art Australia Online

Bevan Thompson, a Yamatji/Noongar man, was born in 1947 in Perth, Western Australia. He has worked in the mediums of ceramics, glass and paintings since 1994 and prior to this date had not participated in the arts at all. He spent his working life as a Musterer of sheep and cattle at Rawlinner, (approx 600 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie), a Plant Operator for the West Australian Department of Main Roads and for various mining companies in Kalgoorlie and as a CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) participant. It was in Kalgoorlie in the early 1990s that he decided to change his career path and began to investigate if the visual arts could become an option. It was his friend and fellow West Australian artist, Shane Pickett who advised him that if he wanted to have a career in the visual arts he should go to art school and so Thompson enrolled in visual arts at Kalgoorlie TAFE. This course allowed Thompson to experiment with many different media including jewellery making, printmaking, drawing, china painting, photography, painting, ceramics and glass, eventually he settled on ceramics, painting and glass as his mediums of choice.

He staged his first solo exhibition at the Goldfields Art Gallery in Kalgoorlie in 1994 followed by group shows in 1996, 1997 and 1998 in the Moores Building in Fremantle, WA and a 1999 group show at the CMC TAFE Art Gallery in Perth. In 1999 Thompson returned to live in Perth where he enrolled at Curtin University of Technology gaining a distinction in an Associate Degree in Contemporary Aboriginal Art. He followed this with a Bachelor of Arts, an Honours degree and a Masters in Art (gaining this in 2004), all at Curtin University of Technology.
Although working in painting, glass and ceramics, it is ceramics that is giving Thompson his profile. His ceramic pieces, often inspired by his grandmother’s stories of land, animals and stars as well as stories of Thompson’s lived experiences, are large stoneware pots (some standing over 700 millimetres high) using the coil and throw method. “Art”, says Thompson, “is my passion, my identity and culture. I use art to tell my story using clay as my canvas. Clay represents Mother Earth, who is the main provider for Indigenous people” (1). His piece, Sandhills, 2008, is a large ochre-coloured pot that has a large band of white stoneware circumnavigating the middle of the pot, in which raised line markings, like those that the wind forms on sandhills of the deserts or even the sand dunes of the beaches. Thompson states that Sandhills “ also represents the sandhills of Geraldton, WA where I lived as a child” (2). This work was shown with other works including Noresman Salt Lakes I, II, III & IV , 2007 in the 2008 solo exhibition, Shedding My Skins: Ceramic forms by Bevan Thompson at Gallery East in North Fremantle, WA. That same year he showed his work in the exhibition, Ceramics by Bevan Thompson at Raft Artspace in Darwin, NT.
Thompson has been recognised in many awards including winning the 2002 'City of Bayswater Acquisition Art Award’, as a finalist in the 2007 'Shepparton Art Gallery Indigenous Ceramic Art Award’ and as a second place getter in the 2008 'Town of Vincent Art Awards’.
His work is held in the collections of the Alexander Library in Perth, City of Bayswater collection in Morely, the Holmes a Court collection, the State Government of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
Thompson continues to live and work in Perth, Western Australia.
1. Bevan Thompson in 2009 email correspondence with the author.
2. ibid.

Writers:

Allas, Tess

Date written:

2009

Last updated:

2011