Fine Art Gallery

Genevieve Loy is a young artist from the Utopia region. She is the granddaughter of Nancy Petyarre and has learnt painting from her father, Cowboy Loy Pwerl. Like Cowboy, she paints the Bush Turkey Dreaming, on one level showing the tracks the bush turkey makes as it searches for seeds and other “tucker” and makes its way to the waterhole. On a more complex cultural level, her paintings are about women’s ceremonies. Genevieve’s paintings are characterised by a beautiful and careful handling of paint; a harmonious sense of colour; and great control of the delicate spidery marks that make their way across her canvas.

Genevieve Loy Kemarre (1982- ), the daughter of renowned painters Cowboy Loy Pwerl and Carol Kunoth Kngwarray, is the most exciting, naturally gifted young artist to emerge from the Utopia region in recent times.

Since 2010, she has been a finalist in the Blake Prize, the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, the Paddington Art Prize, the Fleurieu Art Prize, the Churchie, the National Emerging Art Exhibition and the Alice Prize: and her works have been acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia, Deakin University, Melbourne along with numerous private collection around the world.

Despite being only in her 30s, her works show an innate and mature grasp of colour, design, and resolved aesthetic direction. Her Bush Turkey Dreaming (or Arwengerrp) paintings combine traditional meticulous dots and elegant wisps, creating vibrant, pulsating, and richly textured surfaces. Her works relate to the creator of her ‘country’, the bush turkey, as it makes its way between its nesting place and various waterholes searching for seeds and other tucker. On a more complex cultural level, her works are about Anmatyerr ceremonies.

Though they are firmly positioned within prescribed cultural conventions, Genevieve’s paintings are entirely independent and originally inspired works. They represent Genevieve’s own re-imaging of the Dreaming stories. The strong diagonals that stylistically anchor each painting represent the spatial ‘Dream lines’, and, to borrow from Margo Neale, they evoke ‘a sense of the timelessness embodied in ancestral continuity.’

Dr. Christine Nicholls, has referred to the paintings of Iylenty artists of which Genevieve is the most inspired descendent as being “more than simple reconstructions of visible spatial features”. They offer “an integrated spatial, environmental, economic, spiritual and moral ‘reading’ of the land.”