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 arts metaphor as a frame for this story, a painter creates a portrait in oil of the leading actor while the show is being performed. The two-act play tells the life story of Albert Namatjira in linked, chronological vignettes with interspersed reflections commenting on contemporary Australian discourses. Act One speaks of Namatjira's birth in the central Australian desert and his subsequent upbringing on the Lutheran mission of Hermannsburg (NT), his elopement with his wife Rubina and the struggle to feed his family. Cultural differences between the Aranda and the Christian missionaries are playfully touched upon in scenes of Albert's early