Andrew Gaubert Delamain Crocker
Born in England, 1945, and died in Namibia, 1988, Andrew Crocker was an son of an Anglo-Irish, Sandhurst-educated army Major and a Russian-born lady with apocryphal claims of ties to the Russian imperial family.
Andrew was educated at Downside Abbey School and Jesus College, Camridge, where he read Classics. At Jesus, he was one of the youngest undergraduates and taking his BA aged only 19. Subsequently, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Barrister, but pursued neither of these professions, and instead involved himself only briefly in minor-scale family farming at South Petherton Fruit Farm in Somerset, Southwest England.
Ultimately, Andrew's restless character and broader interests prompted him to emigrate to Australia where he bought land. This he used as a means both of laying down roots and for obtaining Australian citizenship more swiftly, a status which was important for him in Australia, as, with the activities he pursued whilst there, he was swimming against the tide and the accepted political wisdom at a time when championing Aboriginal identity and interests was "not done". Clearly Andrew might have run the very real risk of becoming an "undesirable alien" for stirring up trouble and been packed off to England, where he still in fact kept a home.
In his adoptive country, Andrew Crocker created the image of a somewhat quixotic Englishman, an identity which he carefully polished with such details as being a life member of Queen's Tennis Club, London, and playing the ancient royal pasttime of real tennis, when he was not farming in Somerset.
Andrew was also lucky enough to live off an unearned income from a family Trust and which allowed him the benefit from a certain freedom of movement and final dedication to the Aborigines and especially the Aboriginal Art of Australia's bushmen. During the late 1970's and early 1980's such beginnings were not easy at all, for Andrew's voice was a solitary one and the Aborigines were yet to receive some legitimacy from the Australian establishment and their Art to gain national and international recognition.
In this latter respect, Andrew's intuition doubled by imagination, hard work and relentless effort in public relations eventually paid off, when he managed to interest Mr. Holmes a Court, the Australian businessman, to buy a whole collection of 27 paintings of Aboriginal Art, a collection which now sits in the Holmes a Court Gallery, East Perth .
At his own initiative and partly with his personal funding Andrew organised the first exhibition of Australian Aboriginal Art , ever to be shown abroad, in Paris, London and California. This represented the traveling exhibition of the work of Charlie Tjaruru Tjungurrayi, from Kintore in Central Australia.
Andrew died young, being the victim of a bomb at a hotel bar in Namibia where he was staying and to this day this murky business has not been elucidated: he was, at the time of apartheid intending to meet with some Namibian independentists, something which the South African secret services might not have viewed with great favour. Andrew's remains were flown to Britain by the Australian Government for a family burial in his Somerset home village, Kingsbury Episcopi.
Andrew's obituary appeared in the London Guardian, in the Aboriginal Law Bulletin, as well as other periodicals. He had a short but significant life whose legacy is still treasured by many today.
References:
- Vivien Johnson, "Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert: A Biographical Dictionary
", Craftsman House (January 2001), ISBN: 9768097817
- Review of the 2006 Exhibit of Papunya Tula at Holmes a Court
- Obituary in the "Aboriginal law Bulletin" (reprinted below)