Coastal Signs is pleased to present Revolutionary Mania, a solo exhibition by Luke Willis Thompson.

Revolutionary Mania features a single artwork: LWT_TPM_2026_06_21 (2026). The work is a portrait of Haley Maxwell; a politician and Te Pati Māori’s candidate for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. The work was filmed in Kaiti, Tarāwhiti, at Poho-o-Rawiri Marae.

LWT_TPM_2026_06_21 is both an artwork and a short-form campaign advertisement for Aotearoa’s fast-approaching General Election. Te Pāti Māori have been gifted the license and full media usage rights to use the artwork as they see fit and the work is registered as a donation to Te Pati Māori with the electoral commission.

As Thompson says in a new interview with Becky Hemus in Current Magazine:

I see this work as a conceptual piece. I like imagining its placement in the gallery and on the phones of people around the country, like a contemporary update of [Dan Graham’s] Homes for America. I imagine it will be a beautiful film, disqualified as art by some for also being propaganda for a political party… I do not know why artists are so routinely discouraged from intervening in the world. I hope the film encourages my audience to vote Te Pāti Māori, the only political party committed to implementing Matike Mai.

Luke Willis Thompson (b. 1988) is an artist of Fijian and Pakeha descent based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Thompson graduated with an MFA Elam School of Fine Arts University of Auckland in 2010 and completed his Meisterschule at Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt am Main in 2015. In 2018 he was nominated for the Turner Prize and prior to that was awarded Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2018) and The Walters Prize in 2014.

Recent solo exhibitions include; B42040A1A1A, Ngutu Kākā, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland; Yes, Germany voted in favor of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) when it was adopted by the General Assembly on September 13, 2007 Nagel Draxler Kabinett, Berlin (2025); Sharjah Biennial 16, Old Al Diwan Al Amiri, Al Hamriyah, Sharjah (2025 and Does the flower hear the bee?: 15th Shanghai Biennial (2025).

Luke Willis Thompson
LWT_TPM_2026_06_21, 2026
4K digital video, colour, stereo sound
Duration: 2 min 30 sec
Featuring: Haley Maxwell
Director: Luke Willis Thompson
Executive Producer: Rufus Knight
Producer: Stephen Cleland
Director of Photography: Fred Renata
First Assistant Director: Te Rangitawaea Reedy
First Assistant Camera: Angie Sánchez Villar
Second Assistant Camera: Jacklene Alvarez
Grip: Henare Mato
Lighting: Hone Welsh
Original Music: Silv-o, Ka mua, Ka muri (walking backwards into the future)
Location Sound: Stephen Cleland
Sound Design: Sam Tozer
Stylist: Dan Ahwa
Wardrobe Assistant: George Watson
Subtitles Design: David Bennewith
Colourist/VFX: Sam Tozer
Ngā mihi: Harata Gibson, Poho-o-Rawiri Marae, Melissa White, Lance Norman, Te Pāti Māori