Emily Kam Kngwarray

Painted at Delmore Downs Station, Northern Territory, for the Delmore Gallery in June, 1990 (catalogue number 0K05)

Robin Purvis, Eastern Desert Art, Brisbane, acquired in 1990

Private Collection, Queensland

Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, Important Aboriginal + Oceanic Art, Melbourne, May 18, 2011, lot 26

Private Collection, Melbourne

Acquired from the above by the present owner with the assistance of Tim Klingender Fine Art, Sydney

Kelli Cole, Hetti Perkins and Jennifer Green (eds.), Emily Kam Kngwarray, Canberra, 2024, p. 72

Eastern Desert Art, Brisbane, Emily Kngwarreye, October 6 - 21, 1990

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Emily Kam Kngwarray, December 2, 2023 - April 28, 2024

Painted just over a year after Kngwarray took up synthetic paints and canvas, this work attests to decades of the artist’s experience of drawing in the sand, in the customary manner of narrating ancestral sagas. The linear tracery of the painted substrate spreads like the meanders of the roots of Kngwarray's totemic plant anwerlarr, the pencil yam, to anchor flurries of dotting that relate to the seeds of the yam at various stages of development from light colours when raw to the darker colours when ripe.

It is here that the full force of Kngwarray’s genius comes to the fore as a colourist. She only had to look around her when she painted Untitled, in early June 1990 as the landscape was in bloom following some unseasonal rains. The period also marks the beginning of an evolution in her painting method, moving beyond the colours of the traditional palette to a broader spectrum to suggest the natural bounty of her country of her birth, Alhalker, the focus of her identity, her home and her art. In particular, the painting relates to two works on the same scale painted in May that year, After Rain and another untitled work, both in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.¹

The documentation accompanying Untitled, 1990, describes a narrative about an ancestral male Emu, one of the main figures in the creation of this land, and his chicks feasting on the rich resources offered by the land. Typically, the narrative attached to Kngwarray's paintings is like the subterranean vine that grows out of sight. Hers are not pictures of places or records of events: to quote Stephen Gilchrist in the catalogue to the major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia in 2023:

"Kngwarreye’s paintings of place are better understood as threshold objects that create openings onto Anmatyerr lands, life ways, life cycles and life forces. This is the undeniable essence and power of her painting practice. It pulls the viewer into invocations of people, place and history that don’t merely illustrate the Dreaming but enact it."²

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Delmore Gallery which states: "The most phenomenal fact about Emily is that she is a full ritual Aboriginal of approximately 80 years of age, producing stunningly powerful works of art in a modern abstractionist style, whilst keeping true to her relationship with her country. Each work brings an enthusiastic verbal patter about her place, Alalgura [Alhalker], and the various bush tucker species that rouse her passion. Emily has spent most of her life at this place, and knows it intimately, in good season - and in bad. It is essentially the power of the red, bare soil, with its countless seeds of energy hidden, lying in wait for rain, that when recognized, binds one forever to the country by the marvels of such a dramatic transformation and the abundance that follows. Using a broad palette, Emily displays her country in bold and brazen storms of colour, each colour representing the raw, ripe and dry fruit, the bud, the flower, the dry petals, the plant stem, the scattered seeds - all parts of the life cycle."

¹ See Isaacs, J., Smith, J. Ryan et al., Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, Craftsman House, Roseville East, N.S.W., 1998, plates 7 and 8, pp. 50-1 respectively; and Neale M. (ed.), Utopia; The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, National Museum of Australia and The National Museum of Art, Osaka 2007, pp. 126-127 cat. Nos. D-14 & D-15, respectively.

² Stephen Gilchrist in Cole, K., J. Green and H. Perkins (eds.), Emily Kam Kngwarray, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2023, p.169. This exhibition will be shown at Tate Modern from 10 July 2025 to 11 January 2026.