Namatjira was born in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, and is the great-grandson of renowned watercolour artist Albert Namatjira. After his mother, Jillian, died in 1991, Vincent and his sister were removed by the state and sent to foster homes in Perth, Western Australia. Of this period, he has said that he felt lost and did not have good memories of childhood, especially as an adolescent. When he was 18, he travelled to Ntaria in the Northern Territory to find his extended family. Here he drew reconnected with lost culture, language and country, and got involved with land management issues. During a trip through the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara, he met his wife, Natasha, and settled with her family at Kanpi. In 2011, he was inspired to take up painting by Natasha and her father, Jimmy Pompey, both artists based at Iwantja Arts, an Aboriginal-owned and -operated centre in Indulkana. He and his family visited Ntaria, where they studied his aunt, the late Elaine Namatjira, a leader of the Hermannsburg Potters, create artworks about their country. He learnt more of the impact of his great-grandfather, Albert Namatjira.
Career
Namatjira began painting in 2012, initially working on traditional dot paintings and taught by his wife Natasha. In 2013, he started painting portraits, which he found to be his preferred focus. His 2014 series, Albert's Story, reflects on his great-grandfather Albert Namatjira's life and legacy. About the series, Namatjira said: "I hope my grandfather would be quite proud, maybe smiling down on me; because I won’t let him go. I just keep carrying him on, his name and our families' stories". His entry for the 2016 TarraWarra Biennial, Endless circulation, comprised a series of portraits of the seven Prime Ministers who had been in power in Australia during his lifetime until that point. Also in 2016, he painted a series of portraits of the seven wealthiest people in Australia. Three Legends, Namatjira's entry for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2017, was a series of three portraits: David Unaipon, the first published Indigenous Australian writer; Jimmy Little, the first Indigenous performer to have a top 10 single; and Lionel Rose, the first Indigenous boxer to win a world title.
Style
Namatjira's paintings have been described as caricatures, bordering on "outsider art". They often depict famous and powerful people standing alongside the artist, as if in a publicity shoot, with frequent references to Captain James Cook, the British royal family and contemporary Indigenous life. He has said that he is interested in people and their stories, and likes to use humour in his paintings. He has said that Cook, the 18th-century British explorer, is one of his favourite subjects, and it was one of his portraits of Cook that was purchased by the British Museum. Although his portraits resemble caricature, according to the art historian Wes Hill they also have "a level of sophistication that only a colourist, not a satirist, could possess". Curator of Indigenous Australian art at QAGOMA Bruce Mclean describes Namatjira as "one of the leading lights of the emerging generation of artists from remote central Australia".
Namatjira's work was shortlisted for the Archibald Prize in 2017 for Self-portrait on Friday; in 2018 for Studio self-portrait ; and in 2019 for Art is our weapon – portrait of Tony Albert.
In 2019, Namatjira won the Ramsay Art Prize, which is awarded by the Art Gallery of South Australia and is open to Australian artists under the age of 40 working in any medium. His work Close Contact is a double-sided portrait on plywood featuring a full-length Captain James Cook on one side and a full-length self-portrait on the other, which remains at AGSA.
