Ann Gollifer

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Ann Mary Gollifer (born 1960) is a British-Guyanese visual artist living in Gaborone, Botswana. Her work, including Mother Tongue, is in the British Museum’s Sainsbury African Galleries. She was born in Mabaruma, Guyana, to a Warao-Arawak mother and an English father. In 1962 her family moved to the Solomon Islands, and at age seven she attended boarding school at Ursuline Convent in Brentwood, England. She studied English Literature and Art History at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with an honours degree in History of Art in 1983. After working at Christie’s Contemporary Art in London, she moved to Botswana in 1985. There she worked as a Senior Technical Officer at the Botswana National Museum and also helped part-time at the Phuthadikobo Museum in Mochudi. From 1991 to 2001 she was involved with Thapong, the international artists workshops in Botswana, helping to organise workshops and contribute to building the Thapong Visual Art Centre. Thapong connected local and international artists, historians and curators, broadening Gollifer’s network. In 2009, Steve Jobson described her work as innovative and powerful in the Artists in Botswana exhibition.