NextGen Utopia

NextGen Utopia In the footsteps of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre, Minnie Pwerle and Polly Ngale

NextGen Utopia In the footsteps of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre, Minnie Pwerle and Polly Ngale

Text ©Susan McCulloch & Emily McCulloch Childs Design ©Lisa Reidy Images ©The artists Published by Everywhen Artspace & Salt Contemporary Art

Front: Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 202 x 100cm. (Detail) Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Alhalkere, My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 94 x 194cm. (Detail) Over page: Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum Flowers, 2021, acrylic on linen, 94 x 199cm. (Detail)

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EXHIBITINGARTISTS

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye Bernadine Kemarre Bessie Petyarre Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye Charmaine Pwerle Emily Pwerle Esther Haywood Petyarre Janet Golder Petyarre Jeannie Mills Pwerle Katie Rumble Petyarre Natalea Holmes Petyarre Selina Teece Pwerle Teresa Purla

Foundingartists andtheirlegacy

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1. Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Earth’s Creation, 1994, 275 x 632cm 2. Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Untitled, 1993, 120 x 90cm 3. Emily Kame Kngwarrye, Untitled, 1991, 230 x 131.5cm

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4. Gloria Petyarre, Leaves,12 panels: 90 x 75cm each. Winner Wynne Prize, 1999 5. Minnie Pwerle, Awelye – Atnwgengerrp, 2001, 165 x 356cm 6. Minnie Pwerle, Awelye, 120 x 90 cm 6. Polly Ngale, Anwekety (Bush Plum), 110 x 195cm

Foundingartists andtheirlegacy In the summer of 1988-89 in the Utopia region of Central Australia a project was initiated that was to revolutionise the course of Australian art.

After 10 years of innovative batik-making, the women artists of Utopia painted on canvas for the first time – their works exhibited in SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney in 1989.

Outstanding were paintings by the then mid 70-year-old Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Although Emily was only one of dozens of early Utopia artists whose work made an impact, it was largely due to the huge response to her lyrical and increasingly bold imagery that Aboriginal art came to be regarded as a contemporary, rather than an ethnographic, art form.

Kngwarreye is still the highest priced female Australian artist overall in the auction market. Her 1994 painting – Earth’s Creation – twice set auction records for Aboriginal art by selling for one million and two million dollars respectively. Her work has been the subject of major national and international retrospectives and her legacy continues to grow.

Following Kngwarreye’s death in 1996, other women artists came to the fore. Significant of these was the ground-breaking award winning painter Gloria Petyarre who with her sisters, was a major force in continuing the presence of Utopia women’s art in capital cities.

Like Emily, another important founding artist, Minnie Pwerle started painting in her late 70s in 2000 with works depicting women’s body designs in free, gestural imagery.

Paintings by the senior artist Polly Ngale feature the bush plum in layer upon layer of dots to create rich fields of glowing colour.

In NextGen Utopia we pay tribute to these founding artists and explore the work of fourteen of their descendants – each of whom grew up surrounded by the art of their famous forebears and who now create dynamic, culturally rich paintings in distinctive and individual styles.

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Polly Ngale, Bessie Petyarre, Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Janet Golder Kngwarreye Polly Ngale’s immediate family include her daughter Bessie Petyarre and her granddaughters Belinda and Janet Golder Kngwarreye.

Bessie and Belinda’s works feature the bush plum. Once prolific throughout central Australia the juicy flesh of the small fruit is packed with Vitamin C. The women of Utopia conduct ceremonies in tribute to the bush plum and other fruits and to ensure their continued growth.

Bessie Peytarre’s works with their more defined and highly coloured dots are similar in style to those of Emily Kame Kngwarrreye. The younger Belinda Golder loads her brush more heavily to build up layers and layers of glowing colours in works reminiscent of those of her grandmother, Polly and especially of Emily Kngwarreye’s Awelye (ceremony) paintings that depict the differing colours of the seasons.

Her older sister Janet creates unique works that represent a number of women’s stories of her Utopia country. Utopia is not one central community, but rather a collection of small homeland settlements established next to underground water bores across a vast area. It is this which has led to artists from different parts of Utopia developing their distinctively different styles. Janet pays tribute to these different styles in her encyclopaedic paintings called My Country.

Gloria Petyarre, Esther Haywood Petyarre The late artist Gloria Petyarre began a stylistic movement that continues until this day, as seen in the work of her granddaughter, Esther Haywood. In 1999, Petyarre became amongst the first Aboriginal artists to win a major award at an East Coast public Gallery when she won the Wynne Prize for Landscape Painting at the AGNSW with her multi-panel work, Leaves.

Petyarre’s studies of native plant leaves from her Country were her enduring subject matter for the rest of her life. Symbolising the significance of plants: as bush medicine in her role as a traditional healer, as a provider of life-giving sustenance, and as creation ancestors, the leaves movement across the canvas recalls the movement of plants on Country and other striking visual effects of nature. Petyarre’s granddaughter Esther Haywood continues this tradition, handling the skill of painterly movement as dextrously as Petyarre did, and continuing her significant work also as a colourist, one of the Utopia School’s most famous aspects.

Minnie Pwerle, Emily Pwerle, Charmaine Pwerle, Teresa Purla Minnie Pwerle became well-known for her striking paintings of Awelye, women’s ceremonial body paint from her country Atnwengerrp. Her work symbolised the Pwerle clan body paint design, painted onto women by one another for rich increase ceremonies, where the land and its natural beings are celebrated in dance and song cycles.

Minnie’s sister Emily Pwerle and her granddaughter Charmaine Pwerle continue this tradition, each bringing their own energy and dynamism to the Awelye Pwerle clan design.

Charmaine’s elder sister Teresa, however, illustrates another famous Utopia aspect: its independence. She works in her own unique style, which is a distinctly visually different interpretation of the same Atnwnengerrp landscape.

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Ada Pula Beasley, Bernadine Kemarre, Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye, Natalea Pula Holmes, Selina Teece Pwerle Now more than 30 years since the project that introduced Utopia women painters to the world, the Utopia school has grown into a huge and diverse painting movement. Senior artist Jeannie Mills Pwerle has become well known for her lush Yam dreaming paintings in which she loads the same brush with a mix of cleverly combined colours. Younger artists Bernadine Kemarre and Caroline Petrick Kngwarreye continue the tradition of bush medicine and seed dreaming paintings in new and distinctive styles while Selina Teece Pula and Natalea Pula Holmes create luminous landscapes that depict the scale as well as detail of their beautiful lands.

At the heart of these fresh new styles is the legacy of the artists grandmothers and mothers – whose paintings these younger artists intimately from a very young age and whose artistic talents they have absorbed and pay subtle reference to in their exciting and ever-evolving art.

Susan McCulloch and Emily McCulloch Childs September 2021 Right: Charmaine Pwerle, Awelye, acrylic on linen, 120 x 79cm (detail)

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Ada Pula Beasley, My country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 70 x 100cm | MM5271 | $2200

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 202 x 100cm | MM5527 | $4800

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Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 90 x 93cm | MM5516 | $2400

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum Flowers, 2021, acrylic on linen, 117 x 198cm | MM5499 | $4500

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Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum Flowers, 2021, acrylic on linen, 119 x 198cm | MM5498 | $4700

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum Flowers, 2021, acrylic on linen, 94 x 199cm | MM5384 | $3900

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Bernadine Kemarre, Bush Medicine Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 138 x 93cm | MM5478 | $2500

Bernadine Kemarre, Bush Medicine Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 117 x 97cm | MM5459 | $2400

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Bessie Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2021, acrylic on linen, 200 x 98cm | MM5526 | $4500

Bessie Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2021, acrylic on linen, 93 x 67cm | MM5524 | $1400

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Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye, Apmer Achinya, 2021, acrylic on linen, 120 x 100cm | MM5504 | $3500

Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye, Apmer Achinya, 2021, acrylic on linen, 150 x 70cm | MM5502 | $3200

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Charmaine Pwerle, Awelye, 2021, acrylic on linen, 120 x 70cm | MM5501 | $2500

Emily Pwerle, Awelye Atnwengerrp, 2021, acrylic on linen, 130 x 132cm | MM5505 | $4600

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Esther Haywood Petyarre, Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 130 x 198cm | MM5508 | $3900

Esther Haywood Petyarre, Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 95 x 116cm | MM5507 | $2400

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Esther Haywood Petyarre, Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 100 x 118cm | MM5506 | $2400

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Alhalkere – My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 122 x 91cm | MM5520 | $2900

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Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Alhalkere – My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 124 x 200cm | MM5510 | $4900

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Alhalkere – My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 94 x 194cm | MM5509 | $4500

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Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Alhalkere – My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 198 x 108cm | MM5398 | $4800

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Alhalkere – My Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 99 x 89cm | MM5391 | $2400

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Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Yam Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 120 x 100cm | MM5377 | $2600

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2021, acrylic on linen, 100 x 200cm | MM5375 | $4900

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Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2021, acrylic on linen, 91 x 61cm | MM5241 | $1300

Katie Rumble Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2021, acrylic on linen, 90 x 66cm | MM5523 | $1300

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Katie Rumble Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2021, acrylic on linen, 200 x 186cm | MM5373 | $4900

Natalea Holmes Pula, My Country, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 54 cm e. | MM5402 | $1400 MM5395 | $1400

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Selina Teece Pwerle, My Father’s Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 100 x 120cm | MM5337 | $4500

Selina Teece Pwerle, My Father’s Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 100 x 120cm | MM5336 | $4500

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Teresa Purla, My Grandmother’s Country, 2021, acrylic on linen, 58 x 58cm | MM5515 | $590

Artists’ Biographies

Ada Pula Beasley is an Alyawarr speaker born at Ampilatwatja in 1959. She currently resides in the remote community of Epenara, 250 km south east of Tennant Creek in Central Australia. Ada started painting in 2012 and is well known for her depicting the beautiful, layered landscape of her Alyawarr country.

The landscapes encompass all Dreaming’s associated with her traditional country. Ada is interested in preserving her culture and teaching the younger artists about country – keeping alive the knowledge of the elders, knowing when and where to go hunting and gathering, bush medicines, locations of ‘soakage’s’ (water), travelling with family for ceremonies, and maintaining a connection with the land. Ada is sister to artist Michelle Holmes and daughter to artist Jilly Holmes.

Her landscape works have been exhibited in leading galleries around Australia since 2013 and have become highly sought after for their beautiful colours and sense of scale.

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye was born in 1986 and is an Anmatyerre speaker from the Utopia region of Central Australia, situated approximately 130km north-east of Alice Springs. Belinda comes from a long line of significant and well-established artists. She is the daughter of Bessie Petyarre; her sister is Janet Golder Kngwarreye and both artists are the grandaughters of Polly Ngale. Her great aunts are artists Kathleen Ngale and Angelina Ngale. In her depictions of the seeds, flowers

and fruit of the bush plum - an important dreaming story as well as food source for her people. Belinda is following in the footsteps of these, and other highly regarded artists of the Kngwarreye family, especially Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and Kudditji Kngwarreye.

Bernadine Kemarre is an Arrernte woman born in 1974 at Santa Teresa, NT. She moved to the Eastern Desert community of Utopia to marry Stephen Price Pitjarra the brother of well known artist Anna Price Petyarre. In her art Bernadine follows the great tradition of many of Utopia’s famous women artists such as Gloria Petyarre whose paintings are of bush medicine leaves, bush tucker and other plants of her lands. The style of her bush medicine leaves paintings is highly detailed and she is a skilled colourist, blending many shades of similar or complementary colours together with great skill. Bush Medicine Leaves are collected by women and are used in a variety of different ways - in water as medicine or crushed to create a salve that is applied to burns. Since Bernadine started painting in the late '90s, her work has become more refined and eagerly sought after by art enthusiasts Australia-wide.

Bessie Petyarre is an Anmatyere woman born c. 1960. She is the daughter of Polly Ngale and niece of Angelina and Kathleen Ngale.

She grew up surrounded by famous artists of the Utopia school and started painting in the

1980s. Her brilliantly coloured paintings feature the plants and dreaming stories of her Eastern Desert Country.

Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye is an Eastern Arrernte and Alyawarr women born c 1966. Her traditional country is Irrerlirre approximately 250km northeast of Alice Springs in the beautiful Harts Range. Caroline developed her artistic talents under the tutelage of her mother Jill Kelly Kemarre. Her subtle paintings of intricate patterns of dot work and splashes of colour relate to her mother’s country and stories from Irrwelty. These stories include arnwekety – conkerberry, ntange – seeds and awelye – women’s ceremony. The intricate pattern of dot and line work throughout Caroline’s painting reflects her mother’s traditional country Irrwelty, which lies on Alyawarre land approximately 300 kms north east of Alice Springs in Central Australia.

Charmaine Pwerle is an Anmatyerre woman born in Alice Springs in 1976. She grew up on the Utopia homelands and went to school in Adelaide as well as living and working in Melbourne before returning to live in Alice Springs and her Utopia lands. Her mother is famed painter Barbara Weir and her grandmother the equally famous Minnie Pwerle – the rights to whose stories she has inherited and which she paints. Other famous women painters close to Charmaine include

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her great aunts Emily, Galya and Molly Pwerle and her extended family relatives Gloria Petyarre and the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

A fully initiated woman, Charmaine has four children and lives at Irrultja on the Utopia lands. Always a talented artist her work has developed a great vivacity and surety as she herself matures and has the rights, through initiation and heritage, to paint the stories and the country of her grandmother, Minnie Pwerle with whom she spent much time as a young woman. The large circular images in her paintings represents ceremonial sites, the linear design represents the tracks used when searching for food. The small circular designs are the seeds of the bush melon seed and the curvilinear shapes depict ‘Awelye’ or women’s ceremonial body-paint design.

Charmaine Pwerle’s work is highly sought after by galleries and collectors.

Emily Pwerle’s country is Atnwengerrp and her languages are Anmatyerre and Alyawarr.

She was possibly born in the early 1930s (no records exist) and lives in Irrultja, a tiny settlement in Utopia of about 100 people.

She has had little exposure to western culture and only picked up a paintbrush for the first time in 2004. Sister of the late Minnie Pwerle, Emily Pwerleʼs extended family are all artists: Barbara Weir, Aileen and Betty Mpetyane.

She started painting professionally with her sisters Galya and Molly in collaboration with Minnie Pwerle. Pwerle paints ‘Awelye Atnwengerrp’, meaning women’s ceremony,

which is depicted by a series of lines and symbols, often criss-crossed patterns that are layered across the canvas with colours that are explosive, colourful and energetic.

and Emu and has become well known for her encyclopaedic, striking and detailed paintings that depict many of these stories together in the one canvas.

The patterns represent the designs painted on women’s bodies during bush tucker ceremonies in Atnwengerrp.

Jeannie Mills Pwerle is an Alyawarre speaker born in 1965. She was in the first group of Utopia women painters who put their stories onto canvas in 1989. Called The Summer Project the subsequent exhibition of these works set a new benchmark for the art of Utopia, launching the artists into what was to become a highly significant, multigenerational and ongoing school of art. Jeannie is the daughter of the well-known artist, Dolly Mills and niece of the Utopia elder and acclaimed artist, Greeny Purvis Petyarre. Her main painting theme is the Bush Yam, or Anaty, – a staple food for many Utopia people as well an important dreaming story, celebrated in ceremonies by the Utopia women. A widely exhibited artist Jeanie was a finalist in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2008 and her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Holmes a Court collection and in many other private collections.

Esther Haywood Petyarre is a young Alyawarre woman born in 1982. Her grandmother ws the famous artist the late Gloria Petyarre. Her grandmother gave Esther the right to paint her famous bush medicine leaf paintings. Esther is just starting out in her artistic career and her work is gaining a lot of attention for her fine renditions of the leaves used in bush medicine – showing a similar dynamism, sense of movement and glowing colouration as did her grandmother’s famous paintings.

Janet Golder Kngwarreye is an Anmatyerre woman born in 1973. She is the daughter of Margaret Golder and Sammy Pitjara.

Her grandfather is Old Henry Pitjara and renowned artists Angelina Ngale and Polly Ngale are her grandmothers. Famed artist Greeny Purvis was Janet’s uncle. Janet is married to Ronnie Bird, son of artists, Paddy and Eileen Bird. Together they have four children. Janet has been painting since the late 1990s. She is entitled to paint a number of themes including Awelye (ceremonial body paint design), Mountain Devil Lizard

Katie Rumble Petyarre is an Anmatyerre woman born at Utopia in 1960. She is the niece of the famous artists Gloria and Kathleen Petyarre and grew up surrounded by the artists of the Utopia school of painting.

She has been painting since the late 1990s.

Her central theme is the Anwekety, or Bush

Plum, an important food source gathered

by Anmatyerre women. The Bush Plum has an accompanying Dreamtime story for the people of Utopia. Women will often pay homage to the spirit of the Bush Plum during ceremonies to ensure perpetual germination.

Petyarre’s depictions of Bush Plum illustrate the changing seasonal state of the plant. Her other Dreaming’s include Mountain Devil Lizard, women’s ceremonial body paint and Bush Medicine leaves.

and is increasingly revealing a great versatility as an artist. Her painting themes range from depictions of gum blossoms and the leaves of the spinifex plant to landscapes that relate the stories from her father’s country Antarrengeny.

Notable for its fine sense of colour and balanced design, Selina is dedicated to furthering her artistic career and is proving to be one of the most exciting newer talents of the younger generation artists of the Eastern Desert school of painting.

Natalea Holmes Pula was born in 1982 in Tennant Creek. Her language is Alyawarr, however, she is also fluent in Eastern Arrernte and English. Her mother’s country is near Neutral Junction Station south of Tennant Creek and her father’s country is Antarrengeny which lies in Alyawarr land north of the Utopia Region in Central Australia. Natalea started painting around 2011 under the tutelage of her mother-in-law Jill Kelly Kemarre, who is also from the Alyawarr language group.

Natalea is inspired by the designs she observes in the native flora and fauna found in her country and the women’s ceremonies that pay tribute to them.

Teresa Purla is an Amatyerre speaker born in 1963 in Darwin. She is the daughter of Barbara Weir and the granddaughter of the late Minnie Pwerle, both famous artists of the Utopia region. She relates to the stories from her mother’s country, Atnwengerrp.

Teresa spent much of her early life between Alice Springs, Darwin and the community of Papunya. However her schooling took her as far as Adelaide and Perth. Today she lives in the community of Atnwengerrp, on the Utopia homelands, north east of Alice Springs. Teresa began her painting career in 1990, under the tutelage of her mother Barbara. Her paintings are highly detailed, often multi- layered, and feature finely executed dot work that reflect the women’s stories of her Anmatyerre people. Teresa Purla’s paintings have been exhibited in Sydney, Canberra, Victoria, Paris and Copenhagen.

Selina Teece Pwerle was born in 1977 in her traditional country of Antarrengeny, which lies in Alyawarr country north of the Utopia region in Central Australia. Selina grew up in the 1980s and 90s surrounded by famous artists of the Utopia school of painting and developed her own artistic talents at a very young age

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Right: Esther Haywood Petyarre, granddaughter of Gloria Petyarre.

Esther Haywood Petyarre, granddaughter of Gloria Petyarre, 1941-2021

NextGen Utopia

October 1-24, 2021

Salt Contemporary Art in partnership with

Everywhen Artspace

33-35 Hesse Street, Queenscliff VIC 3225 salt-art.com.au