Vincent Namatjira OAM (b. 1983) is a leading Western Aranda artist and one of Australia’s most important painters. A subversive portraitist, he uses wit and caricature to interrogate the complex colonial narratives implicit in Australia’s relationship with Empire from a contemporary Aboriginal perspective.
Born in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, and now based in Indulkana on Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia, Namatjira is an acute observer of national and international politics, painting wry portraits of well-known figures including U.S. Presidents, Australian Prime Ministers, and members of the British monarchy. Often inserting portrayals of himself or people in his community into these compositions, Namatjira fuses deeply personal histories with incisively political critique. His work is bold, humorous, and conceptually rich in its examination of the connections between leadership, wealth, power and influence.
Namatjira’s practice has been widely recognised in Australia and internationally. In 2025 he was commissioned to create a major new video work, King Dingo, for Vivid Sydney 2025, which was projected onto the façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and was also awarded the Galang Residency, a program delivered through a partnership between Powerhouse and the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. In 2024 he was commissioned to create a major projection for the Enlighten Festival titled Indigenous All Stars at the National Gallery of Australia.
He was honoured with a major survey exhibition, Australia in Colour, at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2023, which toured to the National Gallery of Australia in 2024, alongside the release of his Thames & Hudson monograph. In 2021, Namatjira was invited to produce the site-specific Circular Quay Foyer Wall Commission for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. In 2020, Namatjira was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his contribution to Indigenous visual arts, and in the same year he became the first Indigenous Australian artist to win the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Namatjira was also the winner of the Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2019.
Namatjira has exhibited in major curated exhibitions including the 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain, National Gallery of Australia (2026), Canberra (2021); 경로를 재탐색합니다 UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA, Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea (2022); the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2018–19); Tarnanthi Festival, Art Gallery of South Australia (2017 & 2018); the TarraWarra Biennial 2016, TarraWarra Museum of Art (2016); and Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, the British Museum, London (2015). His work is held in significant collections including the British Museum, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.