City of Stirling Library Services

Emily Kame Kngwarreye, series editor: Natalie King

eng

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

series editor: Natalie King

Mini monographs

Emily Kame Kngwarreye put Indigenous Australian art on the world stage. Discovered in her seventies, she spent the last years of her life painting colour and country, and is recognised as one of Australia's foremost artists. This Mini Monograph has an introduction by awardwinning author and essayist Colm Toibin. Born in her Country, Alhalkere, early in the 20th century, she grew up learning about the land, its history, stories, songs, plants and animals; the practical and the spiritual. She believed her paintings contained the essence of her Country and that they could speak for themselves. Kngwarreye began her 'art' making via batik in the latter part of the 1970s and was an important member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group. In 1988 she made her first painting with acrylic on canvas, and by the time of her first solo show in 1990 she was already in many notable collections and had forged new ground for contemporary Indigenous art. In 1992 she was awarded a Federal Government Creative Fellowship, the first Indigenous artist to receive one. At the time of her death in September 1996, Kngwarreye was recognised as one of Australia's foremost artists. The following year, her work would hang at the Venice Biennale and a major touring retrospective would open at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane. In 2019, the Tate Gallery in London purchased her work, making hers the first piece of Australian Indigenous art to enter their collection

adult