Emily Kame Kngwarreye

    Emily Kame Kngwarreye is perhaps the most significant and innovative artist to have come out of the Utopia Art Movement.

    Biography

    Born around 1910 at Alhalkere (Soakage Bore), Emily Kame Kngwarreye died in 1996. She is one of the most significant and innovative artists to have come out of the Utopia Art Movement. Alhalkere and the clan lands abutting it were annexed for pastoral leases in the 1920's, and Emily and her people lost their traditional way of life. She worked mainly at Woodgreen Station looking after the domestic animals, and also worked with camel trains and at the wolfram mine near Wauchope. Emily was a leader in Awelye ceremonies, and was also active in the land rights movement, in 1979 playing a role in the return of Utopia Station to her people. In 1977 when batik was introduced to the women of Utopia, she adapted traditional designs onto silk, her work already then distinguished by its more free and vigorous approach. It was not until 1988, however, that she first began to paint with acrylics on canvas.

    The Paintings

    "Whole lot, that's all, whole lot. Awelye (my dreaming), Arlatyeye (pencil yam), Arkerthe (mountain devil lizard), Ntange (grass seed), Tingu (dingo puppy), Ankerre (emu), Intekwe (small plant, favourite food of emus), Atnwerle (green bean), and Kame (yam seed). That's what I paint, whole lot." (from an interview by Rodney Gooch translated by Kathleen Petyarre, 1990. Quoted in Kleinert & Neale, p. 619)

    Then in her late seventies, the direct application of acrylic paint on to canvas freed Emily's creative energies, and she began to make work that moved progressively further away from traditional designs. She seemed unhampered by the need to produce work that conformed to any set rule, or to continue to follow a path set by her own previous work, often producing sets of paintings in a particular style, then abruptly changing to explore new techniques and brushwork.

    The Awelye ceremonial designs of breast and body painting and the seasonal changes of the Alhalkere country are her inspirations, and the making of the paintings was in itself a performance. Emily spoke of the yam seed as an analogy for her own life, and it is as analogies that her paintings can be viewed - though clearly spiritual in nature and relating to the wholeness of her country the abstraction often overrides any traditional patterning or relationship to natural forms. Emily's gorgeous palette far extended anything seen before in the paintings of Aboriginal Australians, and she had an immediate grasp of technique and freedom of expression that allowed her genius to fully flower in the few short years of her painting career.

    Her first solo show was in 1990, at Utopia Art in Sydney. In 1992 she was awarded the Australian Artists Creative Fellowship by the Australia Council. After her death Emily's work represented Australia at the 1997 Venice Biennale, and she is now one of the most sought after of Australian artists, her work held in every major public and private collection.
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