Emily Kame Kngwarreye Artwork

Earth's Creation

Emily Kngwarreye Paintings

"Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c. 1910-1996) was a senior member of the Anmatyerre community resident at Utopia, a former cattle station, now reclaimed by its Aboriginal land owners. She is widely regarded as one of the most notable Aboriginal artists of recent times and the pre-eminent woman artist of the desert region. The remarkable painterly and conceptual originality of her work extended her influence well beyond the previous reach of contemporary Aboriginal art and attracted widespread international interest." "This book looks at Emily Kngwarreye's paintings from very different viewpoints: Jennifer Isaacs approaches and explains their meaning as part of Anmatyerre women's culture, and gives a history of the art's development and patronage; Terry Smith examines the works as forming part of the leading edge of contemporary abstract painting; Judith Ryan describes and explores the major works by Emily Kngwarreye from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria; and Donald and Janet Holt give personal accounts of Emily's art and life at Delmore Downs Station." --Book Jacket.

Remembering Forward

Remembering Forward presents works by nine of the most prominent Australian Aboriginal artists: Paddy Bedford, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Queenie McKenzie, Dorothy Napangardi, Rover Thomas, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula. Their works are situated in, and generate, a peculiar tension between traditional and modern and past and present. On the one hand, they usually take as their subject the so called 'Dreamtime' of prehistory from which myths of the earth's and humankind's creation have been handed down. In that regard they are deeply traditional. On the other, these artists have radically changed their medium and method of art-making over the last forty years. Inherited practices of sand- and body-painting have been transformed such that the paintings are executed in acrylic on canvas or other portable media. These changes afforded the artists entry to the global art market. Thus they have adjusted to address an outside public and keep the images free of those parts of the Dreamings that, in their own culture, are reserved for the initiated.