Collection: Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson

BORN: 1958

REGION: Haasts Bluff

LANGUAGE: Anmatyerre 

Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson is an Australian politician and artist. She has been a member of the Northern territory legislative assembly since 2005, and is a prominent indigenous activist and former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) Central Zone Commissioner. 

Anderson is also an accomplished artist.  She retired from politics in 2016, allowing her to devote more time to her other passion.  Many of her close relations were among the most distinguished painters of the first generation, and as a result she was preent for the boirth of the modern Aboriginal Art movement in Papunya in the early 1970s. 

She took up painting in her turn as a young woman, working first for Papunya Tula artists, then the Warumpi and Ngurratjuta art centres. She still paints today: her works are widely collected, and solo exhibitions of her art have been held in recent years in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin.

Impressively, she also peaks six indigenous languages, Anmatyerre, Luritja, Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri, Western Arrernte and Yankunytjatjara.