Matthew Thorne (b. 1993, Adelaide) is an Australian artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work explores contemporary spirituality, masculinity, relationships to labour, colonial history, and sacred ties to land.

Working across film, photography, and installation, Matthew’s work is created through long-term collaboration with communities and place, using documentary and fiction interchangeably to re-stage and reimagine lived histories, myths, and folklore. Through this process, each project becomes a ritual space for reflection and transformation, where these inherited stories, and rites can be re-examined and re-integrated.

His recent film Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in black) (2023), co-created with Yankunytjatjara artist Derik Lynch, received the Silver Bear Jury Prize at Berlinale and the Documentary Australia Award at Sydney Film Festival. His follow up 60-minute moving image installation Extraction (2024), created with Kuyani/Kokatha woman Donna Waters, was commissioned by the Samstag Museum of Art and Creative Australia, and premiered at Adelaide Film Festival.

Matthew also contributed photography and additional direction to Justin Kurzel’s Ellis Park (2024) and Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant (2017), as well as photography to Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2019), and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ album Ghosteen (2019).

Two photo books have been published of Matthew’s work, For My Father (Palm*, 2018) and Jingo was born in the slum (Jane & Jeremy, 2021). He also co-produced the album The Sand That Ate The Sea (Mercury KX / Universal Music, 2019) with Australian composer Luke Howard.

Recent exhibitions of his work include the Samstag Museum of Art (2024), PHOTO Festival Melbourne (2024), Chaillot National Theatre Paris (2024), Greenaway Art Gallery (2023), Lagos Photo Festival (2023), Canberra Museum and Gallery (2022), and the Art Gallery of South Australia (2020), with upcoming exhibitions at the Hamburg Triennial of Photography (2026), and Australian Embassy, Berlin (2026).

Matthew has also received the Martin Kantor Portrait Prize (2023) and the Australian Directors Guild Award for Music Video (2021), and nominations for the Olive Cotton Award (2023), National Portrait Prize (2021), and Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize (2020).

Matthew currently lives and works between Athens, Greece and Adelaide, Australia, and is represented by GAGProjects / Greenaway Art Gallery.