Luke Willis Thompson: B42040A1A1A

B42040A1A1A is a concentrated installation of two ambitious moving image artworks developed over the past three years. Each film imagines a decolonial future for Aotearoa through the visual language of political theatre. Developed in partnership with Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau, this is the first presentation of Fijian New Zealand artist Luke Willis Thompson in Ōtautahi.

Whakamoemoeā (2024), was commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 16, curated by Megan Tamati-Quennell with Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep Öz. Set in 2040, the film envisions the exact moment constitutional transformation in Aotearoa is announced to the world. Broadcaster, journalist, and MP for Tāmaki Makaurau, Oriini Kaipara, is cast as the spokesperson who delivers an official address in te reo Māori at Te Whare Runanga, Waitangi. Kaipara announces a transition from a colonial Westminster-style of governance to an Indigenous plurinational state, fulfilling the visionary aspirations of the 2016 report Matike Mai Aotearoa, led by the late lawyer and jurisprudence philosopher Moana Jackson.

The second work in the series is, similarly, set in a not-too-distant future. Soro (2025) envisions a future redress of the 2021 Dawn Raids Apology. Focusing entirely on a solitary NZSL interpreter, Alan Wendt, while an inferred Prime Minister delivers the speech out of frame, Thompson imagines a bold and expansive set of reparations being delivered by a future Prime Minister. Aotearoa takes a stand to right the wrongs of the past, which are determined to be rooted in the fundamental injustice of colonisation. Captured in black and white 35mm film, Soro presents a dream-like atmosphere where Aotearoa’s alliances to Western powers are cut and a strategic commitment to a united Oceania is made.

Seen together, the works cement a new phase in Thompson’s practice. They consolidate and build on a certain realism that Thompson has carefully tuned in previous works, by for instance, using real-life individuals as opposed to actors, and engaging deeply with significant sites. Yet this new future-orientated approach (which Thompson has described as a kind of ‘political sci-fi’) also enables him to develop an increasingly auteurist vision for his practice, which sees him blurring the lines of philosophy and biography, political activism and storytelling, and exploring the potential of operating between spoken, written, and performed languages.

Image: Luke Willis Thompson, Soro, 2025. Commissioned by Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery, funding support from Niu Dawn Funding Initiative, Creative New Zealand. Courtesy of the artist, Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin.