Albert Namatjira Albert Namatjira Albert Namatjira (28 July 1902 – 8 August 1959), born Elea Namatjira, was a Western Arrernte-speaking Aboriginal artist from the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, he was the most famous Indigenous Australian of his generation. Born and raised at the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission outside Alice Springs, Namatjira showed interest in art from an early age, but it was not until 1934 (aged 32), under the tutelage of Rex Battarbee, that he began to paint seriously. Namatjira's richly detailed, Western art-influenced watercolours of the outback departed significantly from the abstract designs
Namatjira Project Big "h"ART devised a professional theatre show on Albert’s life in close consultation and collaboration with the family. As theatre critic John McCallum writes, the stage production "Namatjira" tells “a story about the commercial appropriation of Aboriginal experience, told in a performance that is a reappropriation of Namatjira's story by his family and descendants, who have worked with Big "h"ART, and the company's director and writer Scott Rankin, to reclaim it”. In addition to help shape the story told, family members toured with the company throughout Australia as artists and performers, conducting watercolour painting workshops and creating large chalk drawings