FEATURE ARTIST | EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE

hayley44920
May 17
5 min read

Updated: Jun 5

FIRST NATIONS FINE ART AUCTION | 17 JUNE 2025

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996)

Also known as: Kngarreye, Ngwaria, Emily Kam Kngwarray

Community: Utopia, Soakage Bore

Outstation: Alhalkere

Language: Anmatyerre

Art Centre: Utopia Arts and Batik

VIEW ARTIST PROFILE

Anmatyerr woman Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Emily Kam Kngwarray) was born in Alhalker on the edge of Utopia cattle station. Preceding her professional artistic career in the late 1980’s, she worked as a batik artist for 10 years. Her career as a painter was as prolific as it was passionate; after only a few short years she had established herself internationally. She died in September 1996 leaving behind a profound and invaluable legacy which continues to grow.

Over the course of her brief but prolific eight-year painting career, Kngwarreye moved through a series of distinct artistic periods. From 1989 until 1991 she painted intimate compositions, tracing plant roots interspersed with animal tracks under fine, sharp-dotted colour fields. Lot 17, Ankara Merne-Intekwe was painted in March of 1990 for her first solo exhibition and is one of the finest examples from this period. The subject, Intekwe, is considered among the most significant and distinct subjects in Kngwarreye’s oeuvre. Only a few works have been given the title of the small native bush plum that sustains the emu. The Intekwe plant (Scaevola parvifolia), is so inextricably interwoven with Kngwarreye’s identity that upon her death, Interkwe was never painted by any other artist. As her niece Violet Petyarre explained:

My Auntie used to paint the fan-flower, and now we all leave that one alone. Auntie used to paint it, that one belonging to the emu. That was her own thing. Even though we all belong to the one Country, we paint separate things.

These highly prized early works gave way to running dotted lines over ethereal landscapes consisting of parallel horizontal and vertical stripes representing ceremonial body painting. By 1993, Kngwarreye was painting floral imagery in a profusion of colour, often achieved by double dipping her brushes into different layers of paint. In 1995 and 1996, her painting series Anooralya (Yam) and Sacred Grasses showcase a transition from her linear body paint imagery to the expressive depiction of rambling yam roots. Kngwarreye’s Final Series consists of 24 revelatory canvases painted with large flat brushes just two weeks before her passing in 1996, mark a powerful culmination of her artistic journey.

In Summer Abundance V, painted in December of 1993 (Lot 18), the application of yellow and green colours highlights the varied and changing hues in the life cycle of the Anooralya Yam and other food plants found near Alalgura on Utopia Station, west of Delmore Downs. From an aerial perspective, we see the sporadic clustered growth after a summer rain. The flourish of growth that follows is exceptional and rapid.

While her preoccupation was with both the life cycle of the yam and the women’s ceremonies that celebrate its importance, Kngwarreye painted many interrelated themes, using these subjects to illustrate her Country as a whole. In an interview with Rodney Gooch, translated by Kathleen Petyarre, Kngwarreye described her subject as:

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 seed.

Posthumously, Kngwarreye’s phenomenal body of work was chronologically curated in Margo Neale’s groundbreaking exhibition Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kngwarreye at the National Museum of Australia in 2007 and The National Gallery of Tokyo in 2008. Kngwarreye’s iconic work, Earth’s Creation I, was selected by Okwui Enwezor to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015. In recent years, Kngwarreye’s work has experienced a renewed acclaim, due in part to several significant commercial and institutional exhibitions, including Emily Kam Kngwarray curated by Hettie Perkins and Kelli Cole for the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and Emily: Desert Painter held at the influential Gagosian Gallery Paris in 2023. In July of this year, the Tate Modern in London will hold a major solo retrospective, marking the most significant international exhibition dedicated to an ‘Australian’ artist.

LOT 17

Ankara Merne - Intekwe, 1990

122 x 92 cm; 126 x 96 cm (framed)

acrylic on linen

Estimate: $450,000 - $550,000

PROVENANCE

Painted in Utopia, March 1990

CAAMA Shop (Central Australian Aboriginal Media

Association), Alice Springs, NT Cat No. 21-390

Utopia Art, Sydney NSW

Private collection, Vic

Essay by Christopher Hodges

Emily Kngwarreye’s First Solo Show was held at Utopia Art Sydney in April 1990. Not surprisingly it attracted attention from contemporary collectors from across the country, a few curators and a lot of artists, many of whom still express their deep regret at an opportunity missed!

Utopia Art Sydney in those days was at Stanmore at the top of two flights of stairs, and this painting was the first to come into view as you entered the gallery. Ankara Merne - Intekwe was catalogue number 6 in an exhibition of 19 paintings. It was snapped up on the opening day and its been in the same hands ever since.

Rodney Gooch, Emily Kngwarreye and I had discussed the concept of a solo exhibition the previous year, and Kngwarreye began work on the show soon after but this was one of the last works to be finished for the show, painted in March 1990. It is an outstanding example from this period.

Layer upon layer of fine dotting subtly reveals the underlying structure below. Earthy pinks and ochres form undulating, shifting fields. Touches of red and yellow ochre, and highlights of black and white, meld together to form a rich deep space that draws you in. You can see the very Kngwarreye touch of a few extra dots here

and there that add spark and mystery to the composition. You can feel the artist working through the layers, energising the field with every mark.

The sides of the canvas are painted too, with the stripes which we know represent body paint or ‘awelye’. They border the composition and though not visible when looking head on, they nevertheless add to the real presence this painting exudes. These borders were a special element that was soon to disappear, until the major breakthrough paintings of 1994 when the ‘awelye’ took centre stage.

Today this painting is an absolute classic of its era, fine dotting with endless variation. Offered for the first time since it was collected 35 years ago, perfect provenance, from her First Solo Show.

It’s a joy to see it again. Don’t miss the opportunity this time!

Christopher Hodges

April, 2025