Emily Kam Kngwarray
EMILY KAM KNGWARRAY c.1910-1996
Region: North Eastern Central Australia (Utopia)
Residence: Soakage Bore
Country: Alhalkere
Language: Anmatyerr
Emily Kam Kngwarray was an Eastern Anmatyerr speaker born at Alhalkere, a small soakage at Utopia. She was the adopted daughter of Jacob Jones, an important Lawman in the Allure community, and was a leader in the women's ceremonial business at Utopia. Emily emerged as an artist while in her late 70s, which makes the immense success of her career all the more impressive. Emily was an adult before she was to meet the white settlers who took up pastoral leases in and around Utopia.
From 1977, Emily Kam Kngwarray, along with other artists from Utopia, engaged in batik as a means of expressing traditional stories and designs. These pieces were later exhibited both in Australia and overseas. In 1988/9, Emily moved to painting on canvas, a medium which better accommodated her highly energetic and expressive style. Emily's first painted canvas was for A Summer Project undertaken in1988 - 1989. Her individual style of heavy brushstrokes and bold colours broke away from the iconographic dotted canvases being produced in the Western Desert, and in doing so she was received as a contemporary abstractionist rather than a 'tribal' painter. She developed distinctive skeletal linear formations which were then overlaid with heavy dots, the result of which was a highly abstracted work. These meandering underlines disappeared from her work during the early 1990s, when she began to use radiant colour fields of dots across the canvas to signify 'merne' or in her meaning, everything - the plants and flowers of her desert country.
'Whole lot, that's all, whole lot, awelye [my Dreaming], arlatyeye [pencil yam], ankerrthe [mountain devil lizard], ntange [grass seed], dingo, ankerre [emu], intekwe [small plant, emu food], atnwerle [green bean] and kame [yam seed]. that's what I paint, whole lot'' (Emily Kam Kngwarray). From about 1994 she began more gestural work, using elegant, fluid colour lines and brush marks evoking Awelye - body designs derived from women's ceremonies. In 1995, she produced Yam Dreamings composed of black and white intertwining lines. Finally, a few weeks before her death in 1996 she painted in broad sweeping slabs of lush pure colour.
The legacy of Emily's prolific and highly successful artistic career has been significant among both Aboriginal artists and the wider community. She is widely regarded as one of the most notable Australian artists of the twentieth century. Her paintings are held in all major museums and galleries in Australia and in significant contemporary collections in America, Europe and Britain. In 1997, the year after her death, her work represented Australia at the Venice Biennale.
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Please be aware that historically from time to time, Emily's name has been spelt incorrectly as Emily Kame Kngwarrey / Emily Kame Kngwarreye. As an Anmatyerr woman, the correct spelling for her name is Emily Kam Kngwarray. For Alyawarr speakers, the spelling is Kngwarrey; as set out by linguist Jenny Green.
Please see Jenny Green's table here for the most current accepted spellings of skin names for the Central Desert area.