ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL - BUSH PLUM
ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL
BUSH PLUM, 2015
78 x 58 cm
synthetic polymer paint on paper
REGION
Utopia, NT
PROVENANCE
Painted at Camel Camp, Utopia in 2015 for Niagara Galleries
Bears Artlore (Marc Gooch) code 2-915 verso
Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
Private collection, Sydney
STORY
As with her sisters, Kathleen and Poly Ngal, Angelina began producing batiks and wooden sculptures in the mid 1980s, probably influenced by her late husband, the older brother of Cowboy Loy Pwerl. She was formerly known as Angelina ‘Pwerl’, her husband’s name. Pwerl(e) in Alyawarr language is the equivalent to Ngal in the Anmatyerr language, and it is as Angelina Ngal that she is referred to today. She began painting as part of the CAAMA ‘summer project’ in 1988-9 and, already at 40 years of age, was included in the first exhibition of Utopia women’s paintings held in Alice Springs in 1980.
Angelina quickly adapted to painting on canvas and subsequently gained international recognition. Her work can be seen as a contemporary dialogue or translation of the cultural, geographic, social and religious components of Anmatjerre life. Her intimate renditions of country are delicately layered and can be read and appreciated at a superficial level for their abstraction and painterliness. At a deeper level, however, they depict the cultural and social mores of the society in which she lives.
Angelina paints her grandfather’s country, Alparra. Many of her paintings depict the Bush Plum, which she represents through a focus of many coloured dots flooding the canvas. She also paints the multicoloured wild flowers of her country, producing patchworks of colour in an ethereal landscape.
Pwerle has completed only a handful of works on paper in her long painting career, each comprised of a single dot colour. Three such works are held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This example, which has never before been offered publicly, is a thrilling demonstration of the artist's power: working with limited space and a two-tone palette, she conjures energy and profundity solely through her virtuosic mark-making.
ARTIST PROFILE
