Christopher Bassi (b. 1990, Brisbane, Australia) is an artist of Meriam, Yupungathi and British descent. Working with archetypal models of representational painting, his work engages with the medium as sociological and historical text and as a means to address issues surrounding cultural identity, alternative genealogies, and colonial legacies in Australia and the South Pacific. Through critical re-imagining, his paintings become a space for a type of speculative storytelling that consider questions of history and place and the entangling of personal and collective experience.
Bassi graduated from the Queensland College of Art in 2017 with a Bachelor of Fine Art. He was a finalist in The Churchie Emerging Art Prize, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2021). Bassi’s work has been celebrated in a number of institutional exhibitions including After Fairweather, Caboolture Regional Art Gallery (2022); I will tell you my story, curated by Talia Smith, University of Technology Sydney Gallery (2022); Portrait 23: Identity at the National Portrait Gallery (2023); Rearranged: Art of the Flower, Museum of Brisbane (2023); The National 4: Australian Art Now, Campbelltown Art Centre (2023); Primavera 2023: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art (2023-24); and Inner Sanctum: 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia (2024). Bassi’s work is held in numerous public collections in Australia including The Museum of Brisbane, Queensland Museum, Morton Bay Regional Galleries, Artbank and Griffith University Art Museum.