Lot 37
  • 37

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE 1910-1996 | Nterkwe – Emu Tucker II

Estimate
70,000 - 100,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Emily Kame Kngwarreye
  • Nterkwe – Emu Tucker II
  • Bears artist's name together with Delmore Gallery catalogue number IR30 on reverse
  • Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
  • 130 by 230 cm

Provenance

Painted at Delmore Downs Station, Northern Territory for the Delmore Gallery in January 1991
Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
Private Collection
Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 29 June 1998, lot 131
Stefano Spaccapietra Collection, Switzerland

Condition

Synthetic polymer paint on linen, stretched, unlined and unframed. Bears artist's name together with Delmore Gallery catalogue number IR30 on reverse. Please note, there is minor cracking to the paint throughout but most noticeably along all four framing edges and to the upper left hand corner of the upper left quadrant. Otherwise, the work appears to be in very good condition overall with no visible signs of repair or restoration.
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Catalogue Note

In the early years of Emily Kame Kgwarreye’s public career, her paintings were largely immediate responses to the changing landscape through the seasons and the appearance of bush foods and other resources at certain times of the year. Painted in January 1991 in the heat of the summer, Nterkwe – Emu Tucker II reflects the landscape littered with dry leaves and fruits underfoot, in anticipation of drenching late afternoon storms that will promote growth in all species of flora. It is the time when nterkwe the bush plum on which emus feed is about to ripen. The veils of dotting across the picture surface, that include dots within dots, recreate the variety of berries and fruits. They are painted over a matrix of lines that map the tracks of emus moving across the ground from nest to nest in search of nourishment. These patterns reiterate the designs painted onto women’s bodies in ceremonies lead by Kngwarreye that were devoted to the continuing fertility of the land. Nterkwe – Emu Tucker II, 1990, is the companion painting to Alagura – my country, 1990, in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.1 It also relates to a number of works on the same theme, including the Emu story painted earlier that summer, in December 1989, and Emu story, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, painted earlier in 1989, both illustrated in Isaacs, J. et al., Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, p.47, plate 4, and p.45, plate 2 respectively.

WC

1 Alagura – my country, 1990, is illustrated on the Art Gallery of South Australia’s website at http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Collection/detail.jsp?accNo=974P44