THE ABORIGINAL ART HOUSE - AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL FINE ART

Portrait Janet Golder Kngwarreye Janet Golder Kngwarreye was born at Mulga Bore in the Utopia region on 15th November 1973.She is the daughter of the established artists Margaret Golder and Sammy Pitjara and grand-daugher of Old Henry Pitjara. She is married to Ronnie Bird Jungula, son of the famous Utopia Artist Ada Bird Petyarre who passed away in 2010. Janet and Ronnie have four children: Rochelle, Renady, Katrina and Troytan. Janet bears the family name made famous by the most celebrated family members Emily Kame Kngwarreye and her brother Kudditji Kngwarreye, Janet’s grandfather . Janet is a member of the Anmatyerre language group. She currently lives in Alice Springs but visits her country regularly. When Janet was a teenager she watched her grandparents paint. They and other family members taught Janet her painting skills. She has become a gifted artist in her own right and is no doubt one of the emerging artists from Utopia. Janet paints stories relating to her Bush Yam and Yam Leaf Dreamings. She also paints Ceremonial Body Paint (awelye) and Bush Medicine Leaves, i.e. leaves of particular plants which have medicinal properties used for the treatment of a variety of ailments. The women from Utopia also celebrate the Bush Medicine Dreaming in their awelye ceremonies. What makes Janet such a special artist is her use of different colours on her paintbrush to produce a multi-coloured single stroke. In doing so she creates a vibrant effect enhanced by her choice of brilliant colours and her neat and detailed approach. Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Gracie Morton Pwerle Gracie was born on Utopia Station, approximately 230 km northeast of Alice Springs, around 1956. She is the daughter of the well known artist Myrtle Petyarre. Gracie continues the rich artistic tradition that encompasses family members including Myrtle’s sisters Kathleen, Gloria, Violet and Ada Bird Petyarre. Her language is Alyawarre, her tribe is Eastern Amatyerre and her country is Alhalkere. Gracie spent her early years in the traditional way of life for central desert families throughout the generations just as her mother and grandmother had done before. Her education involved living and surviving in a desert environment, collecting bush foods and living off the land. Like many of her relatives, such as her aunt Gloria Petyarre, Gracie gained recognition as an artist working in the medium of batik. In 1988 Gracie and the Utopia Artists started painting on canvas using acrylic paint. They appreciated the medium of acrylic paint because it gave them greater freedom and control. Gracie quickly flourished in the new medium. Her earlier works include much line work depicting body-paint designs. Many traditional symbols are seen in her early dot paintings. Gracie further developed her dot work into intricate and layered patterns, using a very delicate dotting technique as can be seen in her Bush Plum Dreamings, known to Alyawarre people as Arnwekety. These paintings represent the fruit growing on low shrubs, the different colours indicating the seasonal changes. The bush plum is one of the main food staples, a small fruit with black seeds. It is eaten raw or cooked and the plant produces a profusion of flowers. Gracie sometimes adds the walking tracks meandering through the bush that are used by the women and children who collect this fruit. Older women use this time to teach the children about their tradition and the land. Gracie also incorporates Awelye into her paintings, i.e. the body paint designs used in ceremonies and rituals that are the basis of her culture. Gracie’s paintings have become eagerly sought after by collectors from around the world. She has appeared in many exhibitions starting from the mid 1980s, both in Australia and in Europe. Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Gloria Tamerre Petyarre Gloria was born at Atnangkere Soakage, north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Her language is Anmatyerre. She is one of the seven Petyarre sisters who are also artists, such as the well-known Kathleen Petyarre, Violet Petyarre und Ada Bird. Gloria’s aunt is Emily Kngwarreye who is one of the most notable Aboriginal artists. In the 1970s she started batik painting and was a founding member of the Utopia Women’s Batik Group, merging the traditional iconography of the Anmatyerre into the new medium of silk. Being a very innovative and dynamic artist, she exerted great influence on others in the group She exhibited her batik cloths in shows around Australia for ten years. In the early 1980s Gloria started painting on canvas for the CAAMA’s Summer Project exhibition which involved translating the batik paintings onto canvas. She soon developed her unique style depicting the stories of the traditional country, such as Pencil Yam, Emu, Bean, Mountain Devil Lizard and Small Brown Grass. Hers is a unique style that has evolved into abstract fields distinguishable for their well defined segments filled with curved lines. Her paintings – monochromatic or multi-coloured – evoke a strong rhythmic quality. They represent her understanding of bodypaint, leaves and grass. By far her most popular style has been ”Bush Medicine Dreaming”. In these works, Gloria depict the leaves of a particular type of shrub that has medicinal qualities and which Gloria, as a healer, is well practiced in. Gloria Petyarre’s works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions starting from 1991 up to 2010. In 1995/1996 she received a Full Fellowship grant form the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Board of the Australia Council. Gloria’s travels include England, Ireland and India in 1990 as part of the Utopia – A Picture Story exhibition. In 1999 Gloria won Australia’s longest running art Prize, the Wynne Landscape Prize, with Leaves , being the first Aboriginal artist to win one of the major prizes of the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. From 1988 onwards, Gloria is represented in major museums and galleries both in Australia and abroad. To name but a few: the National Gallery of Australia; the Art Gallery of New South Wales; Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Museum of Victoria, Melbourne; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Allen, Allen and Hemsley; Gold Coast City Art Gallery; Holmes a Court Collection, Perth; the Westpac Gallery, New York; British Museum, London. Apart from the Wynne Prize, she also received the Tapestry for Victorian Tapestry Workshop Award, Melbourne, in 1993; the Tapestry Commission Award for the Law Courts, Brisbane, in 1994;the Mural for Kansas City Zoo Award, USA, in the same year; the National Works on Paper Award, MPRG, in 1998. Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Dorothy Napangardi Dorothy Napangardi was born in the early 1950s in the Mina Mina area, a sacred and remote region of the Tanami Desert, 400 kilometres north west of Alice Springs. She spent her early childhood living a nomadic life near Lake Mackay during the late 1950’s and the early 1960’s. Her mother, Jeanie Lewis Napururrla taught her to collect the plentiful bush tucker and to grind the seeds for damper cooked on hot ashes. Her family used to camp at claypans and soakages. Dorothy remembers her early childhood days in the bush surrounded by her closely-knit extended family as a time of happiness and freedom. This idyllic life with no exposure to the white man came to an end when her family was forcibly relocated to the government settlement at Yuendumu. Dorothy’s father, Paddy Lewis Japanangka greatly regretted the move mainly because of its impact on the traditional education. Dorothy belongs to the Warlpiri language group. During the Dreamtime ancestral women of the Napangardi and Napanangka subsection groups gathered to collect ceremonial digging sticks which had magically emerged from the ground. They performed rituals of song and dance proceeding east to a place known as Jankinyi. Today a large band of trees stands where the digging sticks once were. In 1987 Dorothy was introduced to painting by her friend and artist Eunice Napangardi (deceased). Initially she painted Mukaki, Bush or Wild Plum Dreaming in vibrant colours. She also painted semi-naturalistic and colourful floral patterns relating to the growth cycle of bush bananas. The year 1997 proved to bring about a significant artistic shift, when Dorothy began painting without any traditional iconography from her familial lines, creating her own innovative language to portray her country. Since around that time her art has evolved into a new distinctive and very individual style for which she uses fine dotted lines representing the landscape around Mina Mina, often exploring different and intricate depictions of its salt pans and sand hills. Topographically the sacred site of Mina Mina is made up of two enormous soakage areas that rarely fill with water. They only exist as clay pans. As water soaks into the ground, small areas of earth dry out and lift at the edges, becoming delineated by salt. She depicts the encrustations of salt stretching infinitely onward, etched with the tracks of women as their paths stretch on, crossing and merging, telling their stories. By creating an intricate and fine network of dots and lines Dorothy accomplishes an interplay of tension and expansion. The artist’s fascination with rigid geometrics coupled with linear movement pulls the eye of the viewer up and down, inwards and outwards, pushing it from one point to the next. Dorothy’s view is constantly changing, one painting giving an aerial perspective, the next giving the impression as if she had placed a microscope to the ground. Whilst Dorothy does sometimes use colour, it tends to be only in a very subtle manner. As a custodian of her country, she enjoys authority over the land, which she depicts in a strikingly free composition of irregularly spaced crossing lines that make up fascinating grids thus creating what in the Western scheme is considered abstraction. Dorothy’s abstraction, however, cannot be understood outside the context of her intention to paint her land. Her paintings do not raise the question of whether they are either abstract of representational; they rather challenge the idea in which the two are mutually exclusive. Over the years, Dorothy Napangardi’s paintings have become internationally acclaimed and have featured in many exhibitions throughout Australia, the USA and Europe, where they are now keenly sought after by curators and art collectors alike. As testimony to her enormous talent Dorothy is the only double winner of the prestigious annual Telstra Art Award and is collected in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, as well as in numerous collections worldwide. In 2002 she was voted one of top 50 most collectable artists by Australian art collectors. As a guide to her collectability and investment potential, her work has reached a top auction price at Sotheby’s of $ 131,725.-. Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Debra Nungala McDonald Debra Nungala McDonald was born on the 11th November 1969 at Papunya Camp in the Haasts Bluff area located 227 kilometres west of Alice Springs. She is a member of the Pintupi language group. The Pintupi people have produced quite a number of renowned Western Desert artists, among them Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (1932 – 2002). Debra’s mother, Martha McDonald, is also a well-known Papunya Tjupi artist. Debra is the granddaughter of the late Aboriginal artist Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi (circa 1920 – 1987). She continues her grandfather’s stories which refer to the Lake McDonald area in the Gibson desert. The dreamings shown in some of their paintings both revolve around the site known as Lungkata, which means ‘home of the blue tongued lizard’. Debra also paints Women’s Ceremonies and subjects that depict her homeland such as My Special Homeland Dreaming and the Honey Ant Dreaming. She uses a precise dotting style along with a palette of warm earthly colour tones. Debra is married to the nephew (now deceased) of Turkey Tolson and son of the great female artist Mitjili Napurrula. They have a daughter called Janet. In July 2010 Debra took part in a very successful Artists in Residence Exhibition at Mulgara Gallery, Sails of the Desert, Ayers Rock. She is a rising star whose works are increasingly sought-after both nationally and internationally. Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Clifford was born around 1932 at Napperby station in the Western Desert. He belongs to the Anmatyerre / Arrente language group. His father came from the Mt. Allen region, his mother from Warlugulong south-west of Yuendumu. The name ‘Possum’ was given to Clifford by his paternal grandfather. Clifford grew up ‘in the bush’ and later at Jay Creek during the late 40’s and worked at various stations around Glen Helen, Mt. Wedge and Mt. Allan as a stockman. He received no formal education. During the early 70’s his brother Tim Leura encouraged Clifford to paint with Geoffrey Bardon’s group of ‘painting men’. Being a renowned wood carver Clifford was one of the last men to join this group of painters. He had been employed at Papunya teaching wood carving to the children. From the mid 80’s he and his family lived at Papunya, Napperby station, near Glen Helen and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory’s Western Desert area. Clifford is a forefather of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement originated by Geoffrey Bardon who encouraged the local Indigenous people to put their dreaming stories on canvas using acrylic paint. Previously, the stories had been depicted on the ground, which made them ephemeral. Clifford joined this group of ‘dot and circle’ painters in 1972 and he immediately distinguished himself as one of its most talented members. He created some of the largest and most complex paintings ever produced. In the late 70’s and early 80’s he was Chairman of Papunya Tula Artists. He pursued a groundbreaking career and was amongst the vanguard of Indigenous Australian artists and internationally recognised. Like Emily Kngwarreye and Albert Namatjira, Clifford Possum blazed a trail for future generations of indigenous artists, bridging the gap between Aboriginal art and contemporary Australian art. His subjects and themes include Men’s Ceremony, Man’s Love Story, Lightning, Goanna, Water, Possum, Fire, Kangaroo, Snake, Fish. Clifford’s works were exhibited in countless museums and galleries worldwide. He is represented in all major collections in Australia and overseas and his works are highly sought after. He was also awarded numerous prestigious prizes. Clifford’s majestic painting Warlugulong was auctioned by Sothebys in July 2007. This work was expected to make art history as the most expensive Aboriginal painting at auction. The work sold for $2.4 million, double the then-record for Aboriginal art. Shortly afterwards, it was revealed that the National Gallery of Australia was the buyer in order to prevent the loss of significant indigenous art to a possible overseas buyer. Clifford spent most of his time either in Alice Springs or in Melbourne and Adelaide with his daughters Gabriella Possum Nungurayyi and Michelle Possum Nungurayyi, who are renowned artists in their own right. On the day he was scheduled to receive the Order of Australia for his contribution to art and to the indigenous community, he died in Alice Springs. He was buried at Yuelamu several weeks after his death, on a site that had been the preference of his daughters and his community. Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Betty Club Mbitjana Betty was born either circa 1954 or circa 1945 – dates vary – in Utopia, NT, located approximately 200 kms north east of Alice Springs. She was born into one of the most renowned painting families in Australia. Her mother was Minnie Pwerle (dcd 2006), her aunt was Emily Kngwarreye (dcd 1996). Her sister is the acclaimed indigenous artist Barbara Weir. Betty’s aunts,(Minnie’s sisters) Emily, Galy and Molly, began painting with Minnie in 2004. Betty grew up watching the art movement develop in and around Utopia. This exposure to art paved the way for Betty and her sisters to take up painting for themselves. Betty first began painting with the group of artists which were part of the famous Utopia batik project under the guidance of Jenny Green. During this time Betty travelled around Australia with many of the batik artists. Betty is continuing the tradition of her mother Minnie’s dreamings, bringing the colours brilliantly onto the canvas in her unique energetic style, reminiscent of her mother’s. Following the death of her Minnie, Betty has increased in profile by skilfully interpreting her own stories in the distinctive style full of colour and movement so typical of the early Utopian artists. Betty’s works often revolve around ceremonial designs and patterns usually painted on women’s upper bodies before a ceremony is performed. The designs have been passed down for many generations, and only the Pwerle or Kemarre owners have the right to paint them. Betty also includes stylized water sources, bush plums, bush berries and bush melons in her artowrks. Betty has become a renowned artist, admired both domestically and internationally. Her paintings are famous for their vibrant colour and dynamic composition and her unique energetic style has made her works highly collectable. They are increasing rapidly in popularity and have become a valued entity in many private and public collections. Betty is married to the late Kummendja Club and divides her time between her homelands at Utopia and Alice Springs, where she resides. Exhibitions 2007 ”The Christmas 2007 Exhibition”, Central Art Aboriginal Store, Alice Springs 2008 ”Central Australian Aboriginal Art – The Ultimate Collection”, Alice Sundown Aboriginal Art, Alice Springs 2008 ”Black & White: Inspired By Landscape”, Kate Own Gallery, Sydney Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Albert (Elea) Namatjira Albert Namatjira was born on 28 July 1902 at Hermannsburg (Njaria), Northern Territory. His parents Namatjira and Ljukuta called him Elea. He belonged to the western group of the Arrernte people. In 1905 the family was received into the Lutheran Church. Elea was baptised and given the name Albert, his father took the name Jonathan, his mother was blessed as Emilie. Albert attended the Hermannsburg mission school. After a western style upbringing, at the age of 13, he spent six months in the bush and was taught the traditional laws and customs of the Arrente community. He experienced an important Aboriginal ritual - initiation. When he was 18 he married Ilkalita, a Kukatja woman. Eight of their children were to survive infancy. In 1923 the family shifted to Hermannsburg and Ilkalita was christened Rubina. Albert’s wife was from the wrong ‘skin’ group and he violated the law of his people by marrying outside the classificatory kinship system. In the following years he worked as a camel driver and saw much of the country he would later paint, the dreamtime places of his Aranda / Arrernte people. Albert sketched the landscape and incidents around him and made artefacts such as boomerangs and woomeras. When, in 1934, two painters from Melbourne visited the mission to exhibit their paintings, Albert was inspired to paint seriously. One of the painters, Rex Battarbee, returned to the area in the winter of 1936 to paint the landscape and Albert acted as a guide to show him local scenic areas. In return Battarbee showed him how to paint with watercolours in the western tradition of painting, a skill that he quickly excelled at. Albert’s paintings were colourful and varied depictions of the Australian landscape. Rex Battarbee also helped Albert organise his first exhibition in Melbourne in 1936. This exhibition was a success. Subsequent exhibitions in Sydney and Adelaide also sold out. His western style landscapes made him famous and other exhibitions of his work followed, especially during the 1950s. He was awarded the Queen’s Coronation Medal in 1953 and was presented to the Queen in Canberra in 1954. Albert won many prizes and became a rich man. Albert won national and international acclaim As the first prominent Aboriginal artist to work in a modern idiom, he was widely regarded as a representative of assimilation. But his quiet presence belied the underlying tensions in his life. Some criticized his watercolour landscapes as conventional and derivative, others considered them as evidence of acculturation and loss of tribal traditions. Albert encountered an ambiguous response form the art world and also racial discrimination. [Namatjira’s mirrored the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of assimilation policies.] Artworks + examples: Superficially his paintings give the appearance of conventional Western landscapes, so different to traditional Aboriginal art -but Albert painted the sites imbued with ancestral associations. {Although he is best known for his water-colour landscapes of the Macdonnell Ranges with its rugged geological features of the land and the nearby region, he had ] He produced approximately two thousand paintings. He blended Aboriginal and European modes of depiction. His achievements were largely eclipsed by the dot painting style developed at Papunya in the 70s. A.N is hailed as one of the greatest Australian artists and a pioneer for Aboriginal rights. Due to his wealth Albert found himself the subject of a ritualised form of begging. The nomadic Arrernte culture expected him to share everything he owned. As his income grew, so did his extended family. So it happened that, over a period of time, he had to provide for over six hundred people. To ease the burden of his strained resources he tried to lease a cattle station, but the lease was rejected. All this resulted in the strange situation that, although he was held as one of Australia’s greatest artists and treated like a celebrity, he was living in poverty. He was not even allowed to own or build a house in Alice Springs. Public outrage at his predicament pushed the government to grant him and his wife full citizenship rights in 1957. Unlike many other Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory Albert and his wife were then entitled to vote, to live where they wished and were granted the same rights as the white population. This led to conflict because Albert and his wife were legally allowed to drink alcohol, his Aboriginal family and friends were not. In 1958 Albert was charged with supplying alcohol to the artist Henoch Raberaba. He denied the charge and his appeals were unsuccessful. As a result he was sentenced to three months in prison of which he finally served two months of ‘open’ detention at the Papunya settlement from March to May 1959. When he was released he was a broken man. He had lost his will to paint and to live. He died of heart failure in Alice Springs in August 1957 and was buried in the local cemetery. Copyright of The Aboriginal Art House 2012-2013

Portrait Anna Pitjara Anna Pitjara (Petyarre) was born around 1965. Her mother was the late Glory Ngarla / Ngale, Ngala and her aunt the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Anna is married to Colin Price. They divide their time between Alice Springs, Adelaide and Mulga Bore, an outstation at Utopia. The couple has two daughters and one son. Anna and Colin are also grandparents, with five grandchildren. Anna’s native language is Anmatyerre but she is also fluent in English. Her country is Alhalkere in the area of Atnelyeye – Boundary Bore. Showing a remarkable talent, Anna started painting in her early childhood and was taught to paint under the guidance of her cousin Gloria Petyarre. Anna produced batik before she started full-time painting when the medium of canvas and acrylic paints was introduced in the community of Utopia in the early 1980s. Anna began selling her paintings in 1996. Anna continues “to “look after” the Dreamings of her grandfather and her parent’s countries from the Boundary Bore region, among them Wild flowers, Emu, Salt Lake, Medicine Leaves, Sand Hills and above all the Bush Yam and Bush Yam Seed Dreaming. As a respected traditional owner Anna engages in sacred ceremonies and paints the bodies of the dancers before the beginning of “ceremony”. Artistic interpretations of these ceremonies and the preparation thereof are reflected in a number of her paintings on canvas namely entitled “Women’s Body Paint” designs. Anna uses a very fine dotting technique to represent landscape, often showing dried salt plains that have formed in the course of time. Large water holes are created following the heavy rains of the monsoon season. When the water evaporates leaving the salt behind undulating features become visible which Anna takes the utmost care to represent in her paintings. As a major representative of Utopia art Anna always endeavours to bring the sensitivity of her culture onto canvas. She is an extremely versatile artist working in several unique styles using bright and vibrant colours for her Yam Seed and Body Painting canvasses, or black and white for her Salt Lake and Sand Hill paintings. She also depicts the Sand Hills in the rich red and ochre colours of the sand and clay of Utopia. Anna’s works have been extensively exhibited and collected all over Australia and overseas including countries like the USA, the United Kingdom, India, Singapore, France, Germany, Poland and Denmark. Copyright 2012-2013 The Aboriginal Art House

Portrait Abie Loy Kemarre (Akemarr) Abie Loy Kemarre, the eldest of five children was born in 1972 at Utopia Station approximately 250 km north-east of Alice Springs. Her parents are Ray Loy Pula and Margaret Loy. Abie speaks Eastern Anmatyerre with English as a second language. Abie devides her time between her homeland at Mosquito Bore, Adelaide and Lake Nash (Alpurrurulam) near the Queensland border. Abie Loy is a rising star artist from Utopia and a member of a family of widely acclaimed artists. Her grandmother is the famous painter Kathleen Petyarre. As a young child Abie observed Kathleen and her sister, the equally celebrated artist Gloria Petyarre, working with batik. She started working in this medium herself and did it so well that her work in batik has been exhibited in Bali. At age 22, Abie began painting under the tutelage and influence of her grandmother Kathleen who helped her develop the fine dotting technique resulting in the highly delicate shimmering dots that Abie uses in most of her artoworks including her celebrated motif entitled “Bush Hen” or “Bush turkey”. She inherited this dreaming from her grandfather. The Bush Hen Dreaming belongs to the country of Artenya and its trail moves right across to Mosquito Bore where it is said to end. Mythologically, the bush hen travels across the country looking for bush seeds that are scattered over the land as is illustrated by the fine dotting in these paintings. The bird also looks for bush plums and bush tomatoes that bear a yellow fruit called Arkitjira. From around 2001 / 2002 onwards Abie began experimenting with the elements of line, colour and form, resulting in a more linear, abstract and expressionistic style as can be seen in her “Sandhills” and the “Women Body Painting” series. In these she depicts the patterns used in traditional women’s sacred ceremonies. The actual substances used to paint bodies during ceremony traditionally consist of natural ochres that are applied with the fingers to the chest, breast and shoulders of women about to partake in ceremony. These ceremonies are performed with song and dance cycles telling stories of the Bush Hen Dreaming. The deep spiritual meaning is only accessible to the participating women of the Utopia area and therefore not known to the wider non-indigenous population. Abie’s powerful Body Paint images could be interpreted as abstract and expressionist. Abie Loy Kemarre combines her innovative extremely fine painting technique with complex optical effects. Her unique style has brought her critical acclaim and places her at the leading edge of the contemporary Aboriginal and Australian art movement. Abie’s works are held in major collections all over the world and she has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. (Solo exhibitions between 2003 and 2006 in Australia, Group exhibitions between 1997 and 2010 worldwide.) She has twice been a finalist in the Telstra NATSIAA awards. Copyright of The Aboriginal Art House 2012-2013