EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE - ALALGURA COUNTRY

 EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE
ALALGURA COUNTRY,  1993
121 x 90 cm painting (127 x 96 cm framed)
Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas
 
PROVENANCE
Utopia, NT
Delmore Gallery, NTPirra Fine Arts, VICPrivate Collection, VIC Cooee Art, NSW 
 
STORY
This is Emu Country - called Alalgura. Custodians of this country learn that the male emu's role is to look after the emu chicks and keep them in sight of their home and not beyond their preferred seeds and fruits. These foods include the Anooralya, a long, thin yam with a small yellow flower. The colours of this plant's leaves, flowers and seeds, and the way it stretches across the ground in a vine-like fashion, are attributed in this work.It is often an important and historical ceremony that is triggered by the nature and/or timing of the season that provokes Emily's memory and lasting emotions. In this case, she has painted following summer rains that are accompanied by the annual ceremonial season. She also believes that through ceremony ("awelye") and her belief in the power of the desert, she can help provoke the desert's hidden energy into a new and bountiful season, and consequent crop of bush tucker. The young girls who inherit custodial responsibility for the desert foods, learn moral and social codes through the stories of their ancestors who had the same responsibilities as well. Providing these codes are followed, and fortune has it, these girls will raise a family and symbolise the fertile and tough nature of the desert and of all its living species - Janet Holt
 
EXHIBITED
Women In ColourInternational Women's Day, March 2019, Cooee Art PaddingtonSydney Contemporary 2019Booth A11, September 2019, Carriage Works