Remembering Namatjira

Albert Namatjira was a pioneering Aboriginal artist who achieved unprecedented fame for his watercolour depictions of central Australian landscapes. In central Australia, there are artworks, monuments, landscapes and cultural sites that are marked as sites for remembering Namatjira. Drawing on Chris Healy's Forgetting Aborigines, this essay examines the visual, spatial and material qualities of these memorials to consider what is remembered and forgotten about Namatjira. It suggests that recent cultural projects offer new ways of understanding and remembering Namatjira's life and artistic legacy.