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Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery Of Modern Art, Vincent Namatjira, Western Arrernte people, Australia b.1983. Vincent is the great-grandson of the renowned Arrernte watercolour artist Albert Namatjira. Careers Featured image detail: Vincent Namatjira Albert and Vincent 2014. Our Team The work was generously donated to the Gallery by Karen Zadra, the artist’s dealer, who identified that it should come to the Gallery where it can be displayed with the Dargie portrait, enriching the ongoing contemporary importance of its famous subject. Image Reproductions & Copyright
You can opt-out at any time. Vincent Namatjira is one of the leading lights of the emerging generation of artists from remote central Australia. I hope my grandfather would be quite proud, maybe smiling down on me; because I won’t let him go. Artist and Western Arrernte man Vincent Namatjira has won the 2020 Archibald Prize, for his portrait of Indigenous footballer and community leader Adam Goodes.
Recently Namatjira has focused on portraiture, imagining and immortalising important historical figures and heroes. https://blog.qagoma.qld.gov.au/highlight-vincent-namatjira-albert-and-vincent Vincent Namatjira’s works since 2014, and for the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art they were responsible for hanging three previously distinct portrait series together as one, shown in such a way that each was improved. E: gallery@qagoma.qld.gov.au It was not my decision to leave Hermannsburg and go so far away, but I was just a child, I didn’t have any voice.
Policies & Right to Information Image Reproductions & Copyright Previously Vincent had seen the work only as a low‑colour reproduction, and as a portrait painter whose work is often inspired by the image and cultural impact of his grandfather, he had a strong desire to view the Archibald Prize-winning portrait. Image courtesy: The artist, Iwantja Arts and THIS IS NO FANTASY . Yet, as leaders and decision makers, their impact has been and continues to be felt internationally. He is well known for his paintings of his great-grandfather, artist Albert Namatjira (1902–59), as well as his portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, Australian politicians and United States Presidents, Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
By distorting his subjects in the manner of a caricaturist, Namatjira lifts the figures of power from their zones of influence and strips them of dominance traditionally accorded to them. Subscribe to QAGOMA Blog for the latest announcements, acquisitions, and behind-the-scenes features. Visiting the Gallery earlier in 2014, Namatjira spent many hours with the work, sitting in quiet reverence in the Australian art galleries, leaning a small mirror against a plinth (on which Daphne Mayo’s Olympian c.1946 stood) so that he could view and sketch himself with the portrait of his grandfather. Seven Leaders (series) 2016 Arthur Roe Collection, Melbourne.
Namatjira is a Western Arrernte man from Ntaria (Hermannsburg) and a descendant of the great artist Albert Namatjira.
But it was William Dargie’s 1956 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of his great-grandfather that affected him most.
The period that followed was characterised by loss, with his sense of belonging and self eroded by his adoptive experience.
Adolescence was hard for me, I was so lost. SBS acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia. Free Wi-Fi available, Our Story