Bronwyn Bancroft

Bronwyn Bancroft (born 1958) is an Aboriginal Australian artist, administrator, book illustrator, and among the first three Australian fashion designers to show their work in Paris.

She was born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, and trained in Canberra and Sydney.

A Bundjalung woman, Bancroft was born in Tenterfield, a town in rural New South Wales, in 1958.

She was the youngest of seven children of Owen Cecil Joseph Bancroft, known as "Bill"—an Aboriginal Australian from the Djanbun clan—and Dot, who is of Scottish and Polish ancestry.

Bancroft has said that her great-great-great-grandmother Pemau was one of only two or three survivors from her clan, the rest murdered when their land was settled by a white farmer.

Her grandfather and uncle worked in local goldmines.

She recalled that her father's education was obstructed by discrimination because he was Aboriginal.

His lack of formal training meant that he had to work away from home cutting railway sleepers, while her mother worked at home as a dressmaker.

Bancroft's father was an engineer during World War II, managing barges at Madang and Rabaul.

Following her father's advice on the importance of getting an education or a trade, Bancroft completed high school in Tenterfield before moving to Canberra in 1976 with her husband-to-be Ned Manning, who had also been her teacher.

There Bancroft completed a Diploma of Visual Communications through the Canberra School of Art, followed by a Master of Studio Practice and a Master of Visual Arts (Paintings) at the University of Sydney.

In 1985, Bancroft established a shop called Designer Aboriginals, selling fabrics made by Aboriginal artists, including herself.

She was a founding member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.

Her artwork is held by the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

She illustrated 20 children's books, including Stradbroke Dreamtime by activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal, and books by artist Sally Morgan.

Her design commissions include one for the exterior of a Sydney sports centre.

Bancroft has a long history of involvement in community activism and arts administration, and has served as a board member for the National Gallery of Australia.

Bancroft has three children: Jack was born in 1985, Ella in 1988.

In 1985, she opened a shop in Sydney called Designer Aboriginals, selling the work of designers including her own fabrics, and staffed by her Indigenous female students.

Bancroft was a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, one of Australia's oldest Indigenous-run artists' organisations, established in 1987.

She served in the roles of chairperson, director, and treasurer during its first two decades.

Bancroft, Euphemia Bostock and Mini Heath were the first Australian fashion designers invited to show their works in Paris, where Bancroft's painted designs on cloth were exhibited at the 1987 Printemps Fashion Parade.

Two years later, in 1989, she contributed to a London exhibition, Australian Fashion: The Contemporary Art.

Between 1989 and 2006, Bancroft held eight solo exhibitions and participated in at least 53 group exhibitions, including shows at the Australian Museum in Sydney, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Her art has been exhibited in Indonesia, New Zealand, the US, France and Germany.

Her father died around 1990.

The National Gallery holds one of her screenprints, Entrapped, created in 1991.

Her painting Prevention of AIDS (1992) was used in a campaign to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in Australia.

She served on the boards of copyright collection agency Viscopy, the Australian Society of Authors and Tranby Aboriginal College, and the Artists Board at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney.

She separated from Manning when they were very young; her third child Rubyrose was born in 1999.

She never returned to live in Tenterfield, although her three sisters were living there in 2004.

In 2004, Bancroft was commissioned to design a large mural covering the exterior of a sports centre housing two basketball courts at Tempe Reserve in Marrickville, New South Wales.

The mural depicts a snake, a man, and a woman, representing both biblical and Indigenous Australian creation stories.

It also includes the goanna, the ancestral totem of the Marrickville area's original inhabitants, the Wangal people.

Despite these successes, she moved away from the fashion industry, telling an interviewer in 2005 that she had not done fabric design for 15 years.

Described as "an instinctive colourist", Bancroft has since worked primarily as a painter, and has developed "a glowing style reminiscent of stained glass windows".

She has cited as influences the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, European painters Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall, and Australian Indigenous artists such as Emily Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas, and Mary Maclean.

Although initially known as a fabric and textile designer, Bancroft has worked with many artistic media, including "jewellery design, painting, collage, illustration, sculpture and interior decoration".

Art works by Bancroft are held by the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery.

Jack was awarded NSW Young Australian of the Year in 2010 for his work arranging the mentoring of Indigenous school students.