THIS IS NO FANTASY + Dianne Tanzer Gallery is excited to present Vincent Namatjira’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne.
Namatjira´s bold painterly works are conceptually rich and wholly contemporary. His imagery calls on Australia’s colonial history, with recurring references to Captain Cook and the Queen, and on contemporary aspects of Indigenous life. His observational works also chart his personal history and his investigatory search for identity. Losing his mother at seven, Namatjira and his older sister were sent to Perth where they were placed into the welfare system. As an adult he returned to the APY lands in South Australia where he now lives. His work captures and celebrates the connection to his past.
Marking out shapes and compositions onto a black background, Namatjira paints confident fragments of colour back into his canvas before boldly outlining characters and slowly building a narrative within his paintings. The works are simply laid out, allowing them to be simultaneously engaging yet estranged; there is dynamic naïve strength to his work, a courage and straight-talking defiance in his application of paint.
‘Vincent is a very witty and often subversive artist. He is really interested in exploring politics but also looking at people and history through portraiture. It has been a pleasure to watch him grow as an artist of notable importance, one of the younger rising stars of painting in central Australia.’
- Bruce McLean, Curator, Indigenous Art, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art
Namatjira was a finalist in the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards in 2014 and 2013; in the John Fries Memorial Award in 2015 and 2013, and the Outback Art Award, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery. His work was included in the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art on at the Art Gallery of South Australia until February 2016. Namatjira’s work is held significant collections including the British Museum, Artbank, and Flinders University Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, 2013.
Press release courtesy THIS IS NO FANTASY.
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