An exhibition of new paintings by Vincent Namatjira features a portrait of King Charles in the central Australian desert, looking very uncomfortable indeed.
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to utilise cheeky humour side-by-side with gut wrenchingly hard stories," the Western Aranda artist said.
His latest show at Yavuz Gallery in Sydney is titled Desert Songs, and comes ahead of major survey exhibitions of his work planned for Adelaide and Canberra.
Desert Songs will also coincide with a monograph to be published by Thames and Hudson in October.
The figures in Namatjira's 13 new paintings are a way to examine politics and power as well as the royal family, Vincent van Gogh, members of '80s rock outfit the Warumpi Band and the artist's great-grandfather, famed watercolourist Albert Namatjira.
For several works, the artist has repurposed commemorative posters from a royal visit, painting over the background to land the late Queen Elizabeth in Central Australia, and paint himself into the picture too.
The incongruity of the set-up, painted with the same colours made famous by his great-grandfather, gives rise to an uncomfortable humour that Namatijira has become known for.
Fellow Aboriginal artist Tony Albert says this "guerrilla" humour, which he describes as a tactic used by blackfella artists to make whitefellas laugh at themselves, is one of Namatjira's greatest attributes.
"Let’s be honest, as Aboriginal men we have much more luck in interrogating white nuances through a joke than by pointing the finger," Albert said in a comment for the upcoming book.
The timing of the show adds extra interest, and potentially discomfort too: it will open around the expected date of the voice to parliament referendum.
Namatjira began painting important figures in 2013, as a way of looking at power, wealth, politics, identity and history.
"For me, portraiture is a way of putting myself in someone else’s shoes as well as to share with the viewer what it might be like to be in my shoes," he said in a statement for the show.
In 2020, he became the first Indigenous artist to win the Archibald prize for portraiture.
Namatjira's survey exhibitions are planned for the Art Gallery of South Australia later in 2023 and at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in 2024.
Namatjira was born in Alice Springs and is based in Indulkana on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia.
* Desert Songs opens at Yavuz Gallery in Sydney on October 5.
