THE NAMATJIRA PROJECT

Albert Namatjira’s watercolour Blackwood Trees at Rapid Creek, Darwin 1950, held in the national collection, is distinctive in the Western Arrarnta artist’s oeuvre. The flowing creek water and tall, straight blackwood trees stand in contrast to the hot reds and sinuous white gums captured in the artist’s most famous paintings of his desert Country. Painted in Garramilla/Darwin, 1600km north of the artist’s home in Ntaria/Hermannsburg, this watercolour of Larrakia Sea Country is one of only a handful that Namatjira created beyond Central Australia. The small group of sea paintings demonstrate the artist’s willingness to experiment with new forms. Significantly, paintings such as Blackwood Trees at Rapid Creek, Darwin, also mark Namatjira’s desire to attain property rights and a better life for his family on the land they had cared for since time immemorial.

Born in 1902, Namatjira spent his early years on the Lutheran Mission at Ntaria/Hermannsburg, approximately 120km south-west from Mparntwe/Alice Springs. For most of his life, Namatjira was recognised by government authorities as a ward of the state before famously becoming Australia’s first Aboriginal citizen in 1957, a decade before the successful 1967 referendum on the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian Constitution. A little more than 100 years before Namatjira’s birth, the arrival of British colonists in Gadigal Nura/Sydney had disrupted and dispersed a highly sophisticated system of laws, languages and cultures, that had been developed and maintained for more than 60,000 years by this country’s First Peoples. From the outset, Namatjira walked between the two worlds: his family and community’s ways of being, caring for Country and each other, and an imported system of foreign laws and rights.

When Namatjira visited Larrakia Sea Country for the first time in 1950 he was not intending to paint. Testament to his success at the time, Namatjira’s arrival in Darwin was announced in the 16 September issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly with lush full-page colour illustrations of his new sea paintings.² The article notes that Namatjira’s purpose for being in Darwin was to appeal the rejection of his application to purchase a Northern Territory grazing lease. At the time, Namatjira was living with his family in a house he had built on the outskirts of Ntaria with funds gained from painting sales at his numerous solo exhibitions. Yet, despite the admiration for his work and sufficient funds in his bank account, Namatjira departed Darwin without the opportunity to secure the grazing lease. This deprivation of property rights and denial of basic social and economic rights would continue for Namatjira until his untimely death in 1959.³

Following Namatjira’s death, this denial of rights would endure for his family and community. Rights to land and homelessness continue to impact the communities of Ntaria and Mparntwe, as contemporary watercolour artist Vanessa Inkamala, Western Aranda people, documents in her etching Homeless on my Homeland 2020. Land rights are critically important for many First Nations artists across the country and some of Australia’s most significant works of art are also legal documents in land rights cases. Examples include the Saltwater: Paintings of Sea Country, used in the landmark legal case that granted Sea Country rights to the Yolŋu people of the Northern Territory, now held in the Australian National Maritime Museum collection; the Ngurrara canvasses, painted by traditional owners at Pirnini in Western Australia for their 2007 and 2012 successful native title claims; and from Central Australia, The Barunga Statement 1988, which hangs in Parliament House and was co-led by former Central Land Council Chair and Arrernte artist Wenten Rubuntja, who was taught watercolour painting by Namatjira.

Unique to Namatjira’s story is the control of copyright for the artist’s famous watercolour paintings. Only four years from now, on 1 January 2030 and 70 years since the artist’s death, Namatjira’s copyright protections are due to expire under the Copyright Act and enter the public domain. His family, however, through The Namatjira Legacy Trust are seeking to maintain protection for Namatjira’s copyright under a perpetual arrangement. Namatjira’s great grandson and Chair of The Namatjira Legacy Trust, Clayton Namatjira states:

Namatjira understood the power of his copyright. The same year that he and his wife Rubina were exempted from the restrictive legislation that applied to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, effectively removing them from the list of wards of the state and therefore enabling them to become citizens, Namatjira entered a financial agreement with John Brakenreg of Legend Press in Sydney to receive royalites for reproductions of his works of art. Through this agreement, reproductions of Namatjira’s watercolour paintings hung proudly in many suburban homes across Australia. When Namatjira died, his will transferred his copyright to his wife Rubina; however, when she passed in 1974 with no will in place, Namatjira’s copyright was assumed by the Public Trustee of the Northern Territory.

It is understood that payments for the reproduction of Namatjira’s works were paid to the family by the Public Trustee in the years immediately following Rubina’s death, although any financial benefits and control the family had over Namatjira’s artwork reproductions ceased completely in 1983 when the Public Trustee sold and transferred Namatjira’s copyright to Legend Press for $8500. For the next 34 years, Legend Press exercised control over Namatjira’s copyright and, as a result, most galleries and museums in Australia displayed ‘No Photography’ signs next to Namatjira’s watercolours and found it prohibitive to reproduce Namatjira’s works in exhibition catalogues.

Throughout these decades, Namatjira’s distinctive way of painting Country was adopted by numerous artists in his family and community. In the early 1940s, Namatjira asked his friend and artistic mentor Rex Battarbee to supply materials so that his son could also learn to paint.⁵ Namatjira and Battarbee also mentored other Western Aranda men and women, including the Pareroultja brothers, Otto, Reuben and Edwin and Ebatarinja family members, Walter and Cordula, all of whom became acclaimed artists in their lifetimes. Following Namatjira’s death, this cycle of creative mentoring has continued, growing each decade and gaining in strength, as demonstrated in the celebrated contemporary practices of the Hermannsburg Potters, watercolour artists of Iltja Ntjarra Art Centre and internationally acclaimed Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira, who lives and works in Indulkana, approximately 400kms south of his family’s homelands.

Despite not having control or opportunity to gain financially from Namatjira’s reproductions under Australian law, his family persisted. It is from this strength that, in 2009, The Namatjira Project was launched by the arts and social change company Big hART, with the aim to draw attention to the injustices and issues of Namatjira’s copyright. Led by the Namatjira family along with creative arts worker Sophia Marinos, First Nations actors Trevor Jamieson and Derik Lynch, and theatre director Scott Rankin, The Namatjira Project created an award-winning touring theatre show that travelled across Australia and was performed in London in 2013. Through this project The Namatjira Legacy Trust was established to benefit Namatjira family members, and a concerted media and legal campaign was launched to secure the ownership of Namatjira’s copyright for his family. Finally, in October 2017, following protracted negotiations, Namatjira’s copyright was transferred to The Namatjira Legacy Trust, who have since managed reproductions through the Copyright Agency. In 2018, the Namatjira family also entered into a settlement agreement with the Northern Territory Government and received an undisclosed compensation sum over the ‘unjust’ 1983 sale of Namatjira’s copyright.⁶

Australia is a signatory to several international copyright treaties, making the case for perpetual copyright for Namatjira a potentially difficult task. Leading intellectual property law barrister, Colin Golvan AM KC argues in his 2024 publication, Protecting Indigenous Art: from T-shirts to the flag, that perpetual copyright for Namatjira would make a ‘significant national statement of regret and reconciliation’, acknowledging Namatjira’s enormous contribution to Australia’s artistic legacy and his role in elevating First Nations art as a contemporary art form and gaining the attention of the broader Australian public. Additionally, Golvan says: It would provide some means of redress — Namatjira himself having faced prejudice and disadvantage in his life, including not least, imprisonment, notwithstanding his celebrated status.⁷ Golvan also identifies that there is legal precedence for perpetual copyright for charitable purposes, which is the model that The Namatjira Legacy Trust is pursuing. This precedence is from the United Kingdom, where a special Act of Parliament was passed in 1988 that amended the country’s Copyright Act so that J.M. Barrie’s copyright of Peter Pan for theatrical productions in the UK is perpetually owned by the Great Ormond Street Hospital for the care of children.

At the heart of After the Rain the National Gallery’s 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial, led by Artistic Director Tony Albert, is the House of Namatjira, a new multimedia installation created by the Namatjira family and community. This installation asserts Namatjira’s innovation and importance in today’s contemporary art landscape and shares his vision for his family. Featuring works from multiple generations, the installation will also include major new sculptures, that recreate the house and garden at Ntaria that Namatjira built in the 1940s, alongside sea paintings and paintings of desert Country after rain. House of Namatjira draws attention to Namatjira’s story and invites all Australians to know more about this visionary artist’s legacy. Tony Albert has worked with the Namatjira family for decades, including supporting the Big hART project by organising an auction to raise funds for the copyright legal fees. Albert says:

‘It is time we honoured this legacy and the rights of Albert Namatjira. Securing copyright in perpetuity for The Namatjira Legacy Trust is not only morally just, it is a necessary act of cultural repair. Albert’s story is all our history, it is living, breathing culture. Let us support and ensure his family has the power to protect and carry that culture forward with dignity, agency and sovereignty.’⁸

This story was first published in The Annual 2025.

Albert Namatjira’s Blackwood Trees at Rapid Creek, Darwin 1950 were on display alongside his watercolour paintings of desert Country after rain as part the 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain. They were accompanied by major new works by artists from Iltja Njarra Art Centre, Hermannsburg Potters and Vincent Namatjira, as well as a multi-generational salon hang spanning 70 years of artistic practice and representing more than 40 artists from Namatjira’s family and community.