Camille Thomas (b. 1998)
Naarm (Melbourne)
They/ them
Camille Thomas is Naarm based artist, librarian, and writer. Informed by these practices Camille looks at the library as an expansive container for thinking about collection, image/art making, and knowledge sharing. Coming from a background in technical drawing they also work across collage, installation and writing, to arrange and reframe found archival and digital material.
Pulled to the slowness and accumulation imperative to both artmaking and library work, Camille trawls images databases such as Wikimedia Commons, the Internet Archive and other national collections for source material. This accrual of disparate images creates an idiosyncratic inventory that pokes at systems of cataloguing, attention and maintenance in the archive, and the porosity of memory.
They graduated with a BFA from RMIT in 2018, with an accompanying Honours year at VCA in 2019. They also completed a Diploma of Library and Information Services from Victoria University in 2021. Their work has been exhibited at galleries such as Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, TCB, BLINDSIDE, Cathedral Cabinet, and KINGS ARI. They are the Current Co-Director of TCB Gallery, one of Naarm’s longest running ARIs.
EDUCATION:
Diploma of Library and Information Services, Victoria University, (2020—2021)
Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) (Visual Art), Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne (2019)
Bachelor of Fine Arts, RMIT University, Melbourne (2016- 2018)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2026 Netherlandish Proverbs - Gossip, Water Closet
2022 Lying dead in a ditch while I work in The Library of Commons, TCB Gallery
2019 sewing without a knot at the end of the thread is not sewing, KINGS ARI
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2025 Emergent Fields — Caspar Connolly, Jieun Ha & Camille Thomas, Fiona Sydney Myer Gallery
2023 Hold it up, dig, BLINDSIDE Gallery
KINGS ARI Fundraiser
TCB Gallery Fundraiser
2022 The General Public, 99% Gallery
Showing #2 invited by Francesca Zak, Suite7a, Sydney
Walking/ Reading Library, as part of LAST Collective Residency: Low Line, Coburg Railway Station
2021 KINGS Artist Run Fundraiser
M16 Artspace Drawing Prize, M16 Artspace, Canberra
The Exterminating Pencil vol.2, curated by Caspar Connolly, Cathedral Cabinet
2020 Quivering in Quarantine: Volume II; We went down into the silent garden
Kindled Spirits Fire Relief Fundraiser, curated by Kari Lee McInneny-McRae and Caspar Conolly, hosted by Catherine Honey
2019 VCA Fine Art Graduate Exhibition (Hons)
Mourning Funes, with Ada Hale, C3 Contemporary Artspace
2018 RMIT Fine Art Graduate Exhibition
Ray Area Extensions, Curated by Dr Phil Edwards, Marquis of Lorne
space for debris: echoes of memory, curated by Camille Thomas, Brunswick Street Gallery
If You Were Buried For A Thousand Years Even You Would Be Priceless, curated by Patrick Larmour, M16 Artspace, Canberra
The Edges And In Between, First Site Gallery
2017 NotFair Art Fair
Feeling Into, Brunswick Street Gallery
SmallWorks 2017 Exhibition and Art Prize, Brunswick Street Gallery
Summer ’40, Rubicon ARI
RESIDENCIES:
2023 Performing Arts Forum, four week residency, St Erme, France
2020 JOYA: AiR, two week residency, Almeria, Spain
PRIZES:
2018 KINGS Artist-Run Graduate Exhibition Prize
2018 Short listed Frankie Magazine Good Stuff Awards
2017 Clifton Hill/ North Fitzroy Community Bendigo Bank Prize (BSG)
2016 People’s choice award Top Arts 2016
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
NUT II Publication, Liza Lacroix, Alli Melanson 2018