Gemma Thompson is a Wellington-based visual artist and musician whose work explores the relationship between sound, drawing and landscape.

For this inaugural Art Works Editions series, Gemma has teamed up with us to produce Sound Form 5, an exclusive print presented in a frame designed especially for the work. Four further prints from Gemma’s Sound Form series are also available online and from our Lyall Bay store.

Gemma Thompson is a visual artist and musician whose practice finds a unique dialogue between poetic form and soundscape. Working across drawing, paint, and sound, she explores and records sonic experience of place. Originally from London, she is now based in Wellington, New Zealand.

Thompson's current body of work draws from a background in observational drawing, her experience as an experimental guitarist, and her listening practice, informed by Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening methodologies. Each piece begins with a soundwalk: "As I move through the landscape, I listen intuitively, translating what I hear into a visual language." Using graphite, she traces recurring sonic marks and motifs. She builds her paintings through layers of oil paint and these sonic marks, inviting the viewer to venture into them.

Her work explores the idea of moving through, or 'within', sound – an immersion in landscape – questioning how a drawn mark or gesture can become a codification of other sensory worlds. She marks sounds by touch: "As the sound moves, or as I move, I mark it down – where it is in relation to my body. I mark pulses, hums, singular gentle tones, construction noises that bury the ambience, birds, the drone of a generator."

Thompson studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, graduating in 2008, before pursuing a career as a professional musician and composer. In 2011, she became a founding member of the critically acclaimed band Savages, writing two Mercury Prize-nominated albums and touring internationally.

In 2018, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the Royal Drawing School’s Drawing Year, focusing on observational drawing. In 2021, she completed an MA in Fine Art Printmaking at UAL Camberwell College of Arts, where she developed a body of work centred on experimental graphic scores. Thompson was awarded the Working Drawing Award as part of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2022. Her work is held in several private and public collections, including those of Sir Michael Moritz KBE, M&C Saatchi, and The Royal Collection.