Ann Gollifer

Ann Mary Gollifer (born 1960) is a British-Guyanese visual artist currently based in Gaborone, Botswana. Her work Mother Tongue can be seen on display in the Sainsbury African Galleries, a part of the British Museum's permanent collection.

Biography Gollifer was born in Mabaruma, in the north-west of British Guiana, now the Barima-Waini district of Guyana. Her mother is Warao-Arawak Amerindian and her father is English. In 1962 her parents re-located to the Solomon Islands and at the age of seven she was sent to boarding school at the Ursuline Convent in Brentwood, Essex. She went on to study English Literature and Art History at the University of Edinburgh from 1979, graduating with an honours degree in History of Art in 1983. She then worked in London at Christie's Contemporary Art before moving to Gaborone, Botswana, in 1985.

Gollifer worked as a Senior Technical Officer under the directorship of its founder, Alec Campbell, at the Botswana National Museum. During this period, she also worked part-time at the Phuthadikobo Museum in Mochudi with Sandy Grant, the museum's founder and director.

From 1991 to 2001 she was part of the committee involved with the administration and facilitation of the Thapong international artists workshops in Botswana. Initiated by Veryan Edwards in 1988, Thapong was an off shoot of the Triangle Arts Trust started by Robert Loder and Anthony Caro in 1982. An artist member of the Thapong committee, Gollifer helped organize international workshops as well as smaller local workshops annually and was part of the executive committee responsible for the building of the Thapong Visual Art Centre in Gaborone. Through the Thapong initiative, international artists would gather to share their material practice, which provided Gollifer with networks between artists, art historians and curators, such as Chris Spring, former curator of the Sainsbury African Galleries, British Museum, Polly Savage, SOAS University of London, Goddy Leye, Lutanda Mwamba, Baba Jaak, Vanessa Jackson, Diana Hyslop, Kagiso Patrick Mautloa and David Koloane.

Steve Jobson described Gollifer's works in his catalogue statement for the 2009 Artists in Botswana Exhibition, National Museum and Art Gallery, Gaborone: "Ann Gollifer is an artist who, through her personal search, has cut a path of innovation, technical and aesthetic excellence and ambitiousness which has made many of us explore our own limitations with more skepticism. Unsurprisingly, we are again subjected to a sensuous treat of the delicate and powerful."

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Omang? – "Who are you?", Sophie Lalonde Art, Gaborone, Botswana, 2015 Branded, The Frame Gallery, Gaborone, Botswana, 2012 2015: A frog in her throat (Snow Moon Editions). 2011: I don't know why I was created. DADA, Coex'Ae Qgam (with Jenny Egner, Eggsson Books). The Fordsburg Artist Studios, The Bag Factory, Johannesburg, 2002

Workshops

Triangle, New York, USA, 2008 Thupelo, South Africa, 2000 Mbile, Zambia, 1998 Thapong, Botswana 1991, 1993, 2001