Anna Louise Richardson is an artist and independent curator living and working on Bindjareb Nyoongar Boodja in the Peel region of Western Australia. Her drawing-based practice is grounded in personal experience and rural life. Growing up on a beef cattle farm, where she continues to live with her husband, artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, and their three children, Richardson’s work explores themes of parenthood, intergenerational relationships, mortality, and human-animal connection. Her drawings use animals, domestic objects, and agricultural references, blending realism with stylised elements, exaggerated scale, flattened perspectives, and cut-out shapes to heighten the emotional impact of familiar imagery. As a non-Indigenous Australian living on a multigenerational farm, Richardson’s practice is shaped by an awareness of the legacies and privileges of living and working on unceded Aboriginal land. Her work reflects on how identity is formed through place, family, and memory, engaging with the complexities of rural life. Themes of resilience, nurture, and intergenerational care are central to her practice, which is also informed by her late mother—veterinarian, artist, and furniture designer-maker—who ran Megan Christie Designs from a converted shearing shed studio on the property. At the heart of Richardson's practice is intimate, regionally grounded storytelling and a commitment to radical optimism—finding beauty and connection in the everyday.
A graduate of Curtin University (2013), Richardson has developed a strong practice as both an artist and curator. Notable projects include When Night Falls (2020) at Maitland Regional Art Gallery, and Museums & Galleries of NSW national tour of The Good (2023–2026), a major solo exhibition exploring concepts of goodness through the lens of motherhood and rural life, co-commissioned by Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and The Condensery. In 2023, she was the inaugural winner of the Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery. As an independent curator, she has worked with institutions such as John Curtin Gallery, PICA, Fremantle Arts Centre, and Arts Project Australia, and co-curated The Alternative Archive, the inaugural Regional Art Triennial a flagship project by Regional Arts WA and Southern Forest. Richardson has also curated touring exhibitions for ART ON THE MOVE, contributed to the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, managed the John Stringer Prize and participated in the Australia Council Emerging Arts Professionals Program for the Venice Biennale (2019).
