Eighty years ago, Albert Namatjira built a house in the desert. Now it has been recreated

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Eighty years ago celebrated Indigenous artist Albert Namatjira used the proceeds from his evocative watercolours to build a house for his family in Australia’s central desert.

Namatjira spent almost a decade of his life in the squat, two room building, cropping watermelons and tilling fruits in the red soils of his garden plot on the fringes of Hermannsburg.

In any capital city, Namatjira’s home might be heritage listed, or a museum. But few people outside Hermannsburg know of its existence. It was a huge surprise even to National Art Indigenous Triennial artistic director Tony Albert when he visited Namatjira’s community last year for research.

Walking into the house for the first time felt like visiting Frida Kahlo’s house in Mexico City “without the queues and the admission fees”, Albert recalls. “An artist’s house becomes an in-route to the story of that person, and it felt like we were on sacred ground.”

Tony Albert, artistic director of the 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial in front of House of Namatjira.

The chance encounter with history became the catalyst for a new artistic installation, one of 10 unveiled this week, which examines intergenerational legacy and cultural warriors of the past, present and future.

Namatjira’s home has been recreated in coloured, stained-glass to scale inside the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) for the triennial’s fifth edition, After The Rain.

Established 20 years ago, the triennial brings together artistic projects by some of Australia’s most significant First Nations artists and collectives. This year’s iteration showcases works by Alair Pambegan,  Aretha Brown,  Dylan Mooney, Jimmy John Thaiday,  Naminapu Maymuru-White and Thea Anamara Perkins.

Its centrepiece, House of Namatjira, is a multi-generational collaboration with 57 of the artist’s kin including the Archibald Prize winning portraitist,Vincent Namatjira, who has painted his great-grandfather as a king in royal regalia.

Members of the Hermannsburg Potters, renowned for their spherical jars, have made terracotta models of domestic objects found in the Namatjira home, such as billy lids and saucepans and the artist’s boots Namatjira left outside his front door.

Namatjira’s image sits in one glass pane, cross-legged with a canvas in his lap amid scenes of ghost gums, grasses, and wildlife. An entire exhibition wall bears a decal of one of the artist’s iconic paintings. The frame itself is tiny—about six by three metres—a place the Namatjira family used only to sleep.

Albert Namatjira’s House on Lhara Pinta (Finke River), Ntaria (Hermannsburg).

Albert, the triennial’s artistic director, says the glass house “doesn’t sit on the landscape; it’s part of the landscape, which is one of the precious points that comes through Indigenous art and culture: the idea of belonging rather than ownership.”

“It’s stained-glass; it’s lit from the inside, so it has a pulsating breath to it,” he adds.

Namatjira pioneered the use of European-style watercolours to depict the Australian outback landscape and became the first Aboriginal person to be granted Australian citizenship. His success paved the way for the Hermannsburg School of art.

But the same world that praised his art blocked his attempts to purchase land, Albert says, which speaks to the kind of entrenched racism and white privilege Namatjira confronted in his lifetime.

Namatjira subsequently purchased land by the Finke River and remained there for much of the 1940s before leaving Hermannsburg for Sorry Business. In Aboriginal communities, families often move out when someone dies to observe a period of mourning.

During his final years, Namatjira lived with members of his extended family in shanties near Alice Springs before his premature death by heart attack in 1959. Out of respect, the house has not been occupied since.

During his research into Namatjira’s life, Albert uncovered polite letters from Namatjira to his mentor, Rex Battarbee, who organised Namatjira’s early exhibitions in Melbourne and Adelaide, requesting paper for family members to practise their art. Albert also discovered Namatjira dabbled in photography. Battarbee gave him three cameras they took on desert painting expeditions.

Namatjira’s use of European-style watercolours to depict the Australian outback landscape was initially celebrated as a symbol of assimilation, but as artistic tastes shifted, critics derided his work as superficial. Sentiment is now shifting back to Namatjira.

“Do we mark him down because of that, or do we actually mark him up given the fact he was so adaptable?” Albert asks. “His work is still grounded in thought and understanding of what it is like to be on Country.”

Albert says there is so much more still to tell of Namatjira’s life, and he wants to see the Namatjira home become more of a tourist destination.

“He is one of my heroes and someone I look up to for paving the way for a better life for us all.”