“Welcome to the Past, Present and Future” declares the opening page of the new monograph on Vincent Namatjira, surely the Indigenous artist of 2024. For the 40 year old, with just 12 years of painting under his belt, has not only had that monograph but a major show, Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour moving this week from Adelaide to Canberra, where it joins Emily Kngwarray in a First Nations-dominant National Gallery.
Of course that Welcome may be all braggadocio. But could it also reveal that this insouciant young man has a deeper understanding of his Jukurrpa, his Dreaming than his loosely painted, satirical portraits might suggest. For Bill Stanner’s invention to explain the idea of Jukurrpa, ‘everywhen’, clearly encompasses past, present and future.
Mind you, Welcome to the Past, Present and Future was also the title of the wall painting that Vincent did for the MCA in Sydney a couple of years ago – a work which included respectful images of Aboriginal figures from the past, including his great-grandfather Albert in his familiar green van announcing ‘Albert Namatjira, Artist, Alice Springs’. But it’s surmounted by Vincent himself on its roof, Aboriginal flag in hand, pointing his own way forwards.
For 18 years, amazingly, Vincent was unaware of his famous ancestry. His mother had died, his father is unmentioned, and he was fostered out of the deserts to Perth. Was he even called Namatjira then, I wonder? It took a return to Nataria, Hermannsberg for him to discover himself and his ancestry, dabble in ineffective paintings in both Albert’s watercolours and desert dotting, and find his way to his current success by marrying a Pompey in the APY Lands.
For it’s clear that his father-in-law, Kunmanara (Jimmy) Pompey, a painter of figures from the pastoral industry and country music, has played a much larger part in developing Vincent’s expressive style than Albert. At the disruptive Iwantja Art Centre, Kaylene Whiskey and Tiger Yaltangki have also been encouraging. Not that his great-grandfather is unadmired. Vincent’s first trip out of the deserts as an adult was to sit reverently in front of the famous Dargie portrait of Albert and return to paint the man “who grabs my by the heart, and is still teaching me”, in the artist’s own words. Indeed, a recent devlopment in his work is clearly the addition of landscape backgrounds to his portraits that reference Albert’s art.
Could his early work Albert and Vincent (2014) actually be one of his best portraits technically – capturing Albert’s pride seen in the Dargie canvas and adding a bright-eyed and optimistic, realistic picture of himself outside the frame?
Away from the family, Vincent’s concentration on “people, and power, wealth and politics” explains so many mocking pictures of politicians, the Queen, Prince/King Charles and that first (though incorrect) symbol of colonialism, poor old Captain Cook, all red-faced and out of their comfort zones in desert settings. Vincent, of course, is quite at home beside Charles: “He is now in my shoes, and his power is stripped away. For we are the spiritual people of this Country”, he told a gallery opening in Sydney.
There are, of course, people who ask why such imprecise portrayals of physiognomy can walk away with the Archibald Prize – as he did in 2020 for his multiple approximations of Adam Goodes with himself? He’s certainly no Ralph Heimans!
Clearly the bold politics in Vincent’s work makes up for much. “An Aboriginal everyman”, was critic John McDonald’s explanation, “unaccountably included in all the team photos of the Royal Family”. The SA Art Gallery curators behind the show go deeper: “His art is a meeting place for a trans-historical and intercultural gathering, consistent with the praxis of a lineage of figurative desert story-tellers, including the late Mr Pompey”.
Urban artist Tony Albert describes Vincent as playing with “guerrila humour – getting whitefellas to laugh at themselves”.
But what to make of ‘Close Contact‘, the back-to-back sculptural work that won Vincent the Ramsey Prize in 2018? His own persona, thumbs up and positive is one side; Captain Cook, grim-faced and forbidding in gesture the other?
Obviously, it’s a brilliant denial of the one-sided history that used to be taught in schools about Cook “discovering” Australia. But how do we read the two characters’ closeness? An earlier series of paintings, ‘Cook’s Story’ suggests Vincent might have even had some sympathy for the man who is turning bright pink in the desert heat where the artist has transported him.
Unsurprisingly, Vincent’s fine self-portrait in this form graces the cover of his eponymous monograph from Thames & Hudson.
Following its Adelaide stay, Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour will travel to the National Gallery in Canberra from March 2nd until 21st July 2024. With Emily in residence there as well, this compares well with plans announced by the AGNSW, which is offering nothing Indigenous this year; nor is the AGSA now that Vincent has moved on. There’s a single specialist show coming to AGWA and two to the QAG. So, how does the busy NGV manage three First Nations shows?
