Vincent Namatjira takes three sugars with his coffee. “What?” he grins. “I like it sweet!” He says this less like a confession and more like a fact, with a frankness that makes me wonder if we should all be glutting our flat whites with sugar, caffeine snobs be damned.
It’s 9.30 in the morning, and we’re standing by the entrance of Yavuz Gallery in Sydney’s Surry Hills, which represents Namatjira internationally. Yavuz’s program director, Alanna Irwin, welcomes us in, and speaks briefly about the current exhibition, Abdul Abdullah’s Magical Thinking, which flanks us on all sides. Namatjira regards Abdullah’s paintings with the concentration of a fanatic - tipped ever so slightly forward, both hands clasped behind his back, curious eyes half-shielded by the black brim of his Panama hat. Anyone wandering into the gallery would pick the Western Arrernte man as an artist from his posture alone.
This month, the 40-year-old’s work - along with that of his great-grandfather, famed Western Aranda watercolourist Albert Namatjira -, presented as part of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s (AGSA) Tarnanthi Festival. The showcase is comprised of vibrant paintings that have established Namatjira as one of the country’s greatest portraitists, from sardonic depictions of politicians and colonial figureheads on Country - (2011), (2016), (2020) - to self-portraits and paintings of Indigenous changemakers including Eddie Mabo, Archie Roach and Gordon Bennett. (2020), portraying himself alongside AFL player Adam Goodes, won Namatjira the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Archibald Prize in 2020. He was the first Indigenous artist to do so.
