Emily
Kame Kngwarreye
Alhalkere, Paintings from Utopia
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 reveals 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.
 —Wally
Caruana
Emily
Kame Kngwarreye died on 2 September 1996. The artist's full name
is used with permission of the Utopia community. This text is based
on an article written for the catalogue of the exhibition from
the Holmes à Collection, Utopia: Ancient Cultures/New Forms,
at Galerie Petronas, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 12 November–10
December 1998.
1
A. M. Brody, 'Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Portrait from the outside',
in M. Neal et al., Emily Kame Knwarreye: Alhalkere, Paintings from
Utopia, Brisbane and Melbourne: Queensland Art Gallery and Macmillan,
1998, p.18.
2 Awelye is the Anmatyerre word for women's painted
or drawn designs and ceremonies.
3 C. Hodges, 'Alhalkere', in M. Neal et al., (1998),
p.35.
4 Brody, in M. Neal et al, (1998). p.11.
5 Ibid., p.19. 6 Ibid.
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