POLY NGAL - ANWEKETY

 POLY NGAL
ANWEKETY,  2009
180 x 120 cm
Synthetic Polymer Paint on Belgian Linen
 
PROVENANCE
Utopia, NT
Mbantua Gallery, Alice Springs NTCooee Art Gallery, Sydney NSW 
 
STORY
Poly is one of the most senior custodians of her country Aparra, in the heart of Utopia. Her artistic career began in the late 1970s when she, like many of the women in Utopia, began working with silk batik before venturing into works on canvas. She shares her country and the Bush Plum (Arnwetky) Dreaming with her sisters Kathleen and Angeline. Poly creates her paintings through extensive overdotting in which she builds up layers of colour in vibrant depictions of her country.The bush plum also known as anwekety is a sweet black berry accessible only a few weeks in the year. Polyā€™s people collect the berries and store them dry, soaking them in water before they are consumed. The plant on which the berry grows is a tangled, spiny shrub that can grow up to two meters high. After rain fragrant white flowers bloom. The orange inner bark from the roots can be soaked in water and the resultant solutions can be used as a medicinal wash, favoured for skin and eye conditions.In this work, Poly paints the bush plum in a purple, its fragrant flower in white and uses orange to depict the inner bark from the roots used medicinally. Gradually and deliberately she piles dots upon each other to create a rich, thick field with a glowing palette of colour.