Emily Kame Kngwarreye. The Legendary and Most Celebrated Australian Aboriginal Desert Artist.

Emily Kngwarreye's paintings are a response to the land and the spiritual forces which imbue it; the contours and formations of the landscape, climatic changes, the parched earth and flooding rains, the shapes and patterns of seeds and plants.

Awelye
Kngwarreye first became a painter as a young woman embarking upon her ritual education. She learnt about awelye designs while painting on the bodies of women about to take part in a ceremony. Awelye refers to the ceremonial world of women, or women's business, and includes women's ceremonial body designs. It also might refer to a particular ceremony and the designs songs and dances associated with it. The striped design painted on the breasts and neckline of ceremonial dancers seems to be the inspirational starting point for many of Kngwarreye's paintings.

Ceremonial cycles are held for individual ancestors. In 1990 Kngwarreye listed the following designs as those over which she had authority:

Arlatyeye (pencil yam)
Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard)
Ntange (grass seed)
Tingu (dingo pup)
Ankerre (emu)
Intekwe (plant that emus like)
Antwerle (green bean) and Kame (yam seed).

Only the component parts are listed, not the complex interrelationship between them. 'Whole lot', which alone can be experienced through her painting, is her entire body of knowledge communicated subconsciously through the interplay of line, colour, movement, space and light.

Alhalkere country

Alhalkere is the name of the country of Emily Kame Kngwarrye's father and grandfather. It gained its name from a rock formation of the same name, eroded away from the escarpment. Kngwarreye painted Alhalkere from a 'traditional' perspective, surveying her landscape with a spiritual eye. Her role was to learn its ancient history and all its physical characteristics as well as the responsibilities associated with maintaining the continuity of the land. Alhalkere is the home to the Yam Dreaming site from which Kngwarreye takes her bush name, Kame. Yam seed was therefore one of her most important Dreamings.

The linear appearance of plants and tracks from her country are another source of inspiration for both her earlier batik paintings and her acrylic paintings on canvas. From her earliest works to her final canvases there is a conceptual and a physical continuity. Kngwarreye indicated that she was aware that her art dealt with transcendent realities as much as physical landscape realities. However whether her batiks and paintings carried elaborate encoded creation stories remains a mystery as she was remarkably and consistently silent when asked to talk about her art.

Batik

For the first 11 or so years of her public artistic career, from 1977 until 1988, Emily Kngwarreye worked in the traditional Indonesian resist technique called batik. Introduced to the women of Utopia in the late 1970s as part of an adult education program, this collaborative and communal activity was immediately popular with Aboriginal women artists. It was low tech. and could be done outdoors. Generally the silk or cotton was stretched over the artist's knees, the fluid wax heated in pots, pans and hubcaps over open fires.

From the beginning, Emily Kngwarreye's work displayed a raw vigour and a sinuous energy, which made her work stand out from the others. Interconnecting and layered lines and dots, plant and other figurative forms and cell like structures, combined to display her control over the flowing wax and overlayed dyes.

These early works displayed a vocabulary of marks, dots, lines of dots, lines of different widths, interconnected and overlayed, which she developed and explored in her later acrylic paintings. In both media, wax and paint, Kngwarreye's iconography remained constant.

Acrylic painting

Her first painting in 1988 was called Emu Woman. It immediately attracted the attention of the commercial art world in an exhibition at the S.H Ervin Gallery in Sydney. The energetic, dynamic, overall design of dots along lighter lines on a dark background created a sensation and almost overnight Kngwarreye was recognised as an artist to collect.

Kngwarreye tended to paint in series of works of a similar style. After the Emu Woman style she commenced a series of paintings with surfaces densely packed with dots with more dots within them.

Another stylistic shift took place when she began to use large brushes. She worked faster and more loosely and on a larger scale. Sometimes she made lines from sequential dots 'dragging' the brush while she dotted; her upper body moving like that of a dancer. The lines themselves snaking across the canvas are reminiscent of the sinuous forms of yam tubers and plants.

During the early 1990s Kngwarreye began to use larger canvases, brighter jewel-like colours, pinks, blues, reds. Dots become lines, blurring and overlapping in spatially complex compositions. Her first suite of paintings, 25 small canvases, hung together to create a massive explosion of colour, was created in 1992. The similar Alhalkere Suite in the collection of the National Gallery was painted in 1993. Full of light, bright pastel pink and blue colour, the lineal structure of her earlier work was obliterated entirely by lines and patches of merging dots.

At the beginning of 1994 Emily Kngwarreye developed a new direction in her work in which she used the lineal forms of body designs and scarification marks as the primary source for her paintings. She had used lines before and then gradually submerged them under skeins of dots. Now she presented the art world with simple, bold compositions of parallel lines in strong dark colours. The paintings in this exhibition reflect the journey of the line in her work. Horizontal, vertical, parallel, thin, thick, dark, light, smooth, jagged, centrifugal. The web-like traceries of the yam, some in black and white are masterpieces of strength and simplicity.

Finally in a burst of energy, her 'scribble' phase led to atmospheric paintings, where line and dot were replaced by patches and drifts of colour.

The linear markings of grasses, yams, roots and tracks form lines of continuity connecting Kngwarreye's last works with her first. First revealed as spidery linear clusters in the early batiks, lines re-emerge in her late works, shortly before her death, as rapid multicoloured scribbles. This visible continuum represents metaphorically the unity between skin and soil, people and country, a timeless connection between Emily Kngwarreye with her country Alhalkere.

She's been called the "Desert Monet," compared to Matisse and Renoir; a painter of "mythic proportions" and, in her lifetime "a one-woman industry." From the time Emily Kame Kngwarreye painted her first canvas for 'A Summer Project 1988-89: Utopia Women's Painting' at the Ervin Gallery in Sydney, her work received widespread acclaim and was quickly recognized as groundbreaking and original, traversing the lines between traditional Aboriginal art and pure abstraction.

She was born around 1910 in Alhalkere, or Utopia Station and in a time when most Aboriginal women were employed as domestics worked as a ranch stock hand, an early display of the strength and independence that would be the hallmarks of her painting.A village Elder and senior member of the Utopia Womens' Batik Project of 1978 that toured in exhibitions in Australia and abroad, Emily painted from 1988 until her death in 1996.

In that brief period her artistic output was phenomenal - thousands of paintings with a stylistic range and force that thrust her - and as a result, contemporary Australian Aboriginal art - into the international art arena.She remains the most lauded painter of the Utopia art movement and one of the best-known desert artists; she painted with an undiminished energy that belied her years: "no one could stop her" it was said, and she was still at it two weeks before her death.

Although she said that discussion about her work was "other people's business," dismissing such inquiries, Emily did admit once: "Whole lot, that's the whole lot. Awelye (my Dreamings, or women's' ceremonies performed to care for 'country'), arlatyeye (pencil yam), arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard), ntange (grass seed), Tingu (a Dreamtime pup), ankerre (emu), intekwe (a favorite food of emus; a small plant), atnwerle (green bean), and kame (yam seed). That's what I paint; the whole lot."

Emily Kame Kngwarreye was awarded the Australian Artists Creative Fellowship in 1992, and by the mid 1990's large collections of her paintings were acquired for permanent display in public galleries, and retrospective exhibitions were mounted at the Art Galleries of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.Her paintings have been showcased in many exhibitions world wide including the Venice Biennale, and two major exhibitions are scheduled for 2008 in Japan: at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, and the National Art Centre in Tokyo.

Finally, it was an epic painting by Emily Kame Kngwarreye entitled Earth's Creation that smashed all previous records for indigenous art when it sold for $1,056,000 (AUS) at an auction in Sydney in May of 2007.

As the only gallery in New York with an extensive major collection of Emily's work, and as one of only a few in the US dealing with contemporary Australian Aboriginal art in any substantial way, the Robert Steele Gallery is especially proud to present Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

In the 1990s Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c.1910-1996) emerged as one of Australia's leading painters of modern times. Kngwarreye's prominence is no overnight sensation; it finds its roots in a lifetime of ritual and artistic activity. Her energetic paintings are a response to the land of her birth, Alhalkere, north of Alice Springs - the contours of the landscape, the cycles of seasons, the parched land, the flow of flooding waters and sweeping rains, the patterns of seeds and the shape of plants, and the spiritual forces which imbue the country. Kngwarreye's vision of the land is unique; her paintings challenge the way we look at art by Aboriginal Australians. Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Alhalkere - Paintings from Utopia traces the brief but impressive career of an artist who started painting in the public arena when she was in her eighties.

Kngwarreye was a founding member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group which commenced operations in 1977. This communal project operated on an egalitarian basis (on the traditional model). No one artist was singled out above the rest. All were encouraged equally to produce work. The Holmes à Court Collection sponsored a series of similar projects which launched the Utopia artists into the public domain on a scale they had not experienced previously. Through the use of introduced materials, their art had begun the transition from the private to the public domain.

Kngwarreye's painting began to attract attention partly due to the prominence gained by the reproduction of her first canvas, Emu woman 1988-89 on the cover of The Summer Project catalogue for the exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney in 1989. The work was selected as a mark of respect to the artist's seniority.1 Emu woman bears similarities in style to her early Awelye2 paintings; they possess strong linear structures upon which distinct individual dots straddle lines and overlap in the areas of ground.

In 1990 the egalitarian attitude fostered by CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) was set aside for a joint artist-in-residence program and exhibition of the work of Kngwarreye and Louie Pwerle (born c.1938) at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. That year Kngwarreye had her first solo exhibition at Utopia Art Sydney.3

Suddenly, public interest in Kngwarreye's paintings created a great demand. Within a short space of time her earnings were substantial but would be, according to custom, distributed amongst kin. From this grew a level of expectation and the pressure to produce work, from family members and dealers alike.4 Kngwarreye's attitude to the results of the growing popularity of her work, represented in cash and adulation, was very much based in traditional values and modes. For example, in 1992 she received an Australian Artist's Creative Fellowship, a substantial sum awarded to artists who have made a major contribution to the cultural heritage of the nation. Kngwarreye regarded the award as recognition of her past efforts and the means to retire; it was time to pass on the mantle of senior artist to others. The demands of the community and family were never to make this possible. She was the great provider.5

The notion of the star artist or the 'solitary genius'6 has been considered antithetical to indigenous custom. Tradition demands the reciprocal rights and obligations in all matters concerning the group or clan, whether it be in rights to land, performance of ceremony, songs, dances and stories, or ownership of painted designs and images. It may also permeate the group's activities in the public domain. Nonetheless, within the communal whole, each individual has an inherited place, one which is enhanced through ritual and through personal attainments. The notions of individual and group are therefore not necessarily mutually exclusive. Further, as in Kngwarreye's case, the benefit accrued by the individual is reflected in benefits to the group as a whole.

Kngwarreye was an eager participant in each of the communal Utopia projects. And, it is the early batik work which holds the clues to her development as a painter. The technique of batik is unforgiving; each mark, each stroke of the canting is recorded, layer upon layer. None is obliterated.

An early batik, Length of fabric of 1981 holds some clues to Emily's range of imagery. The cloth is composed on a linear grid; in some cases dots are laid down in lines, either following a form or filling in a space within the grid. In places dots appear within others. Free-flowing lines and 'patches' of dotting complete the composition.

The work reveal's an exuberance of gesture and a sureness of hand. Here we find the elements which are to recur in Kngwarreye's later paintings; the grids which structure the pictures, the sequences of dots aligned against or over lines, the straight dashes or lines, the wandering lines of unpredictable but resolved logic, the areas of dotting and the build up of colour. These elements are reinterpreted, re-invented, used separately or in varying combinations, refreshed and revitalised in the paintings. The paintings, however, are constructed from a closed set of marks and images found in the batiks. There is no unilinear progression in the development in her painting, rather, Kngwarreye uses the lexicon of marks as a springboard, constantly varying, reinterpreting and creating anew with every touch of the brush to the canvas.

The paintings are not the daubings of an 'untutored' artist acting purely on intuition; the term has been applied often in the press to hype up the phenomenon which is Kngwarreye. Intuitive no doubt these works are; but it is an intuition founded on decades of making art for private purposes, of drawing in the soft earth, of painting on people's bodies in ritual or, in the late 1970s, of painting on the bodies of the Utopia women as they successfully presented their claims to their land in legal proceedings.

Born in 1910, Kngwarreye did not take up painting seriously until she was nearly 80. She lived in the Anmatyerre language group at Alhalkere in the Utopia community, about 200 km north east of Alice Springs. For much of her later life she was mostly known for her batik work along with the rest of this community. Acrylic paintings were introduced to this community by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) in 1988-89. An exhibition of some of the paintings of these artists' work organised by CAAMA was held in called "A Summer Project", where Kngwarreye's work got immediate attention from critics. The attention she received coincided with the worldwide art boom that occurred at this time.

Whereas the predominant Aboriginal style was based on the one developed with some assistance from art teacher Geoffrey Bardon at the Papunya community in 1971 of many similarly sized dots carefully lying next to each other in distinct patterns, Kngwarreye created her own original artistic style. This first style, in her paintings between 1989 and 1991, had many dots, sometimes lying on top of each other, of varying sizes and colours, as seen in Wild Potato Dreaming (1990).
These original paintings of different styles quickly went for high prices at auction, with a turnover for the Utopia group of painters of more than $1 million in 1989-90.

Kngwarreye went through many different individual styles in her short career as a professional painter. In 1992, the dots began joining into lines with parallel horizontal and vertical stripes, representing rivers and terrain, in many different colours. She began using larger brushes than previously, her paintings now consist of much larger dots than the finer, more intricate work which she did when she started.

In 1993 she began painting patches of colour and along with many dots which were like rings that were clear in the middle as seen in Alaqura Profusion (1993), made with a shaving brush that was called her 'dump dump' style which used very bright colours. The same style of rings of colour are also seen in My Mothers Country and Emu Country (1994).

The next year was an even more aesthetic and contemporary style, ending her 'colourist' phase, she began painting with plain stripes that crossed the canvas. These were at first thick stripes which often represented the lines of yam tracks as in Yam Dreaming (1994) and Bush Yam (1995); the strange growth patterns of the yam, a plant which was critical for survival in the desert, but very difficult to find. Later in 1995 her paintings start to resemble in some ways the American Abstract Expressionist paintings of Jackson Pollock with many thinner lines that criss-crossed the canvas but still on the same theme, such as in Yam Dreaming Awelye (1995) and also in black and white Yam Dreaming paintings. Several weeks before her death she painted many canvases over a 3 day period in 1996, using a very thick brush such as in Body Paint (1996).

Yam Awely (1995)

Yam tracks was one aspect which particularly featured in her works. The yam plant was an important source of food for the Aboriginal people of the desert. She painted many paintings on this theme, with the first thing she often did at the start of a painting was to put down the yam tracking lines. This plant was especially significant for her as her middle name Kame relates to the yam plant, as meaning the yellow flower of this plant that grows above the ground. She described her paintings as having lots of meaning to do with all the aspects of the community's life including the yam plants in one of the few well known criticisms of her own work, she said her paintings mean:
Whole lot, that's all, whole lot, awelye, arlatyeye, ankerrthe, ntange, dingo, ankerre, intekwe, anthwerle and kame. That's what I paint: whole lot.
"My dreaming, pencil yam, mountain devil lizard, grass seed, dingo, emu, small plant emu food, green bean and yam."

The success and demand for Kngwarreye's paintings caused her many problems within the community as she tried to maintain her individual identity. The myth of the woman in her 80s who had never been outside the central desert becoming a great painter was one reason for her popularity. She had in fact, been to Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Canberra, though this was only after she had become famous. There was much pressure from the white community for her to paint in a certain way, when they believed that one of her styles was more successful than others.

Eight paintings by Emily Kngwarreye in the Sotheby's winter auction of 2000 put together were sold for $507,550, with Awelye (1989) selling for $156,500.

On 23 May 2007 her 1994 painting Earth's Creation was purchased by Tim Jennings of Mbantua Gallery & Cultural Museum for AUD$1,056,000 at a Deutscher-Menzies' Sydney auction, setting a new record an Aboriginal artwork. (Source: Sydney Morning Herald). Her major painting from the Final Series first exhibited at Gallery Savah in 1997 sold in 2008 for AUD$1,100,000.

With success came unwanted attention. Many other inexperienced art dealers would go to her community to try to get a piece of the action, Kngwarreye once describing to a friend how she had "escaped from five or six carloads of 'wannabe' art dealers at Utopia". Her paintings were providing income for the whole community. She rarely spent any of the money she got from her works herself, or when she did, it was to buy gifts for friends and relatives. She was at some times supplying a car a week to her community, in a society that did not believe in individual ownership, but the sharing of property with the group. Often she had to give up chances of retirement to please her kin and family, and continue to provide money.

According to Sotheby's Tim Klingender "the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an example of an Aboriginal artist who was relentlessly pursued by carpetbaggers towards the end of her career and produced a large but inconsistent body of work. "We take about one in every 20 paintings of hers, and with those we look for provenances that we can be 100 per cent sure of," Klingender says."

The largest collection of works by an Australian artist to be exhibited outside Australia has gone on display at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan until April 13, 2008.

Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, an exhibition developed and presented by the National Museum of Australia, tells the story of Emily Kame Kngwarreye an Aboriginal artist who lived and worked in the desert in the centre of Australia.

The exhibition is the largest collection of works by a single Australian artist to travel outside Australia. It includes 120 works from 65 national and overseas collections valued at more than $30 million.

The National Museum of Australia welcomes the opportunity to bring this major exhibition about such an extraordinary Australian to Japan," said Craddock Morton, Director of the National Museum of Australia. "It not only tells the story of Emily Kame Kngwarreye as one of Australia's greatest contemporary artists but also tells the story of her life as a custodian of the desert country that inspired her work." said Mr Morton.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c1910 -1996) was a senior Anmatyerre custodian and artist who lived and worked 250 kms north of Alice Springs, in relative isolation from the art world that sought her work.

"She was an artist of few words, in English at least," said exhibition curator Margo Neale, "but her paintings speak volumes. She did more than 3,000 paintings on canvas over a period of 8 years, which is roughly one painting per day."
"This is a testimony to how much she had to say about her reason for being and her cultural experience," Margo said.

Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, was supported by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Yomiuri Shimbun, the Australia - Japan Foundation and Woodside Energy Limited.