Ann Gollifer (b.1960), is a British-Guyanese visual artist currently based in Gaborone, Botswana. Her work “Mother Tongue” can be seen on display in the Sainsbury Africa Art galleries, a part of the British Museum’s permanent collection.
She was born in Mabaruma, 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 honors degree in History of Art in 1983. She then worked in London at Christies Contemporary Art before moving to Gaborone, Botswana in 1985.
She worked as a Senior Technical Officer under the Directorship of its founder, Alec Campbell, at the National Museum and Art Gallery, Gaborone. 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 Triangle International Artist’s workshops that took place in Botswana, as well as the many smaller off-shoot art workshops that were organized annually by the Thapong committee. An Artist member of the Thapong Visual Art Centre, Gaborone, she was part of the executive committee, responsible for the building of the centre.
Ann works from her studio in Gaborone and is involved in the creative development of the arts throughout the community there. She and Maipelo Gabang initiated the Artists Residency Centre in Gaborone in October 2019 and together run its program.
"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." - Steve Jobson catalogue statement on the works of Ann Gollifer for the 2009 Artists in Botswana Exhibition, National Museum and Art Gallery, Gaborone.
