New Utopia

New Utopia

New Utopia Everywhen Artspace April 8-26, 2022

Front: Janet Golder Kngwarrye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on linen, 120 x 94 cm (detail) Left: Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 200 cm (detail) Over page: Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 124 x 98 cm (detail)

Text ©Susan McCulloch Design ©Lisa Reidy Images ©The artists Published by Everywhen Artspace

EXHIBITINGARTISTS Ada Pula Beasley Barbara Weir Belinda Golder Kngwarreye Bernadine Kemarre Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye Charmaine Pwerle Emily Pwerle Esther Haywood Petyarre Janet Golder Kngwarreye Jeannie Mills Pwerle Katie RumblePetyarre Rochelle Bird Mbitjana Selina Teece Pwerle Teresa Purla

New Utopia a continuing evolution The art of Utopia, 230km northeast of Alice Springs, has been a major force in Australian art since the early 1990s, when women artists of the region started painting on canvas for the first time.

Most well-known is Emily Kame Kngwarreye, whose lyrical and increasingly bold imagery attracted a huge response. Her work has since broken sales records by selling for up to $3m. Other famous early artists included Gloria Petyarre, Barbara Weir, Polly Ngale and Minnie Pwerle.

The exhibition New Utopia pays tribute to the legacy of these artists through showcasing new works by important founding painters – Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Barbara Weir, Emily Pwerle and Lizzie Moss Pwerle – with those by new-generation artists Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye, Charmaine Pwerle, Janet and Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bernadine Kemarre, Esther Hayward Petyarre, Katie Rumble Petyarre, Selina Teece Pwerle and Teresa Purla.

Each of these highly talented painters grew up surrounded by the art of their famous forebears.

Their art is now making a big impact in its own right through richly coloured and soft-hued works that depict their countries’ numerous wildflowers, water courses and sacred sites and the women’s ceremonies that sustain them.

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Rochelle Bird Mbitjana Founding Utopia artist Polly Ngale’s immediate family include her granddaughters Belinda and Janet Golder Kngwarreye.

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.

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. Her daughter, Rochelle Bird Mbitjana is now following in her mother’s footsteps.

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.

Barbara Weir, 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.

Barbara Weir was an established and well-known painter before her mother, Minnie Pwerle started painting. Weir’s renditions of the indigenous grasses once prolific in her country and her encyclopedic ‘mother’s country’ paintings had made her one of Utopia’s most well known artists in the 1990s and well ahead of the time when her mother, Minnie Pwerle, started painting.

Minnie’s rise to fame mirrored that of the founding artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye, having started her painting career in her late 70s and working prolifically right up until her death aged in her mid 80s.

Minnie’s sisters Emily, Galya and Molly 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 illustrates another famous Utopia aspect – its independence.

She works in her own style, which offers a distinctly visually different interpretation of the same Atnwnengerrp landscape.

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Ada Pula Beasley, Bernadine Kemarre, Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye, Selina Teece Pwerle 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 Ada Pula Beasley and Selina Teece Pwerle 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 April 2022

Ada Pula Beasley, My Country – Where the Bush Flowers Grow, 2021, acrylic on linen, 60 x 90 cm | MM5900 | $2200

Ada Pula Beasley, My Country – Where the Bush Flowers Grow, 2021, acrylic on linen, 45 x 90 cm | MM5900 | $1300

Barbara Weir, Grass Seed, 2019, acrylic on linen, 120 x 90 cm | MM3765 | $ 5400

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Flowers, 2021, acrylic on linen, 118 x 95 cm | MM5656 | $2900

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 93 x 86 cm | MM5904 | $1700

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 90 cm | MM5918 | $2900

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 200 cm | MM5919 | $4900

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 108 x 200 cm | MM5920 | $4400

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum, 2022, acrylic on linen, 100 x 98 cm | MM5929 | $2700

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum, 2022, acrylic on linen, 150 x 90 cm | MM5924 | $3700

Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Plum, 2022, acrylic on linen, 120 x 200 cm | MM5921 | $4700

Bernadine Kemarre, Bush Medicine Leaves, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 130 cm | MM5838 | $2700

Bernadine Kemarre, Bush Medicine Leaves, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 146 x 117 cm | MM5909 | $3600

Bernadine Kemarre, Bush Medicine Leaves, acrylc on linen, 120 x 110 cm | MM5186 | $2800

Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye, Amper Achinya, 2022, acrylic on linen, 100 x 120 cm | MM5894 | $3500

Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye, Amper Achinya, 2022, acrylic on linen, 120 x 82 cm | MM5897 | $3400

Charmaine Pwerle, Awelye, 2018, acrylic on linen, 100 x 150 cm | MM3760 | $4400

Emily Pwerle, Awelye Antwengerrp, 2021, acrylic on linen, 110 x 95 cm | MM5261 | $3200

Esther Haywood Petyarre, Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 199 x 132 cm | MM5780 | $4900

Esther Haywood Petyarre, Leaves, 2021, acrylic on linen, 94 x 152 cm | MM5781 | $2500

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Country, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 200 cm | MM5787 | $5200

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on linen, 120 x 94 cm | MM5915 | $3200

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on linen, 93 x 104 cm | MM5916 | $2700

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on linen, 94 x 109 cm | MM5917 | $2700

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, My Country, 2022, acrylic on linen, 200 x 120 cm | MM5925 | $6800

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Medicine Leaves, 2022, acrylic on linen, 95 x 125 cm | MM5926 | $2500

Janet Golder Kngwarreye, Bush Medicine Leaves, 2022, acrylic on linen, 110 x 200 cm | MM5927 | $5500

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 91 cm | MM5581 | $3400

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 122 cm | MM5834 | $2800

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 124 cm | MM5836 | $2900

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 125 x 200 cm | MM5911 | $4900

Jeannie Mills Pwerle, Yam Dreaming, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 108 x 133 cm | MM5912 | $2700

Katie Rumble Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 95 x 90 cm | MM5905 | $1600

Katie Rumble Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 95 x 90 cm | MM5907 | $1600

Lizzie Moss Pwerle, Dancing Lines, 2020, acrylic on linen, 120 x 92 cm | MM5795 | $3800

Lizzie Moss Pwerle, Dancing Lines, 2020, acrylic on linen, 120 x 150 cm | MM5930 | $6400

Lizzie Moss Pwerle, Dancing Lines, 2020, acrylic on linen, 90 x 120 cm | MM5258 | $2900

Rochelle Mbitjana Bird, My Country, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 100 cm | MM5922 | $1500

Selina Teece Pwerle, Antarrengeny, 2021, acrylic on linen, 70 x 100 cm | MM5790 | $2700

Teresa Purla, Dancing Lines, 2022, acrylic on linen, 93 x 123 cm | MM5914 | $2400

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.

Barbara Weir is an Anmatyerre woman and one of Utopia’s most famous artrists.

Born around 1945, her mother was Minnie Pwerle. All of Weir’s paintings are representations

of the once fertile lands of her mother’s country at a time when plants, animals and water were plentiful. Themes of her paintings include grass seed, bush berry, wild flowers and Awelye (women’s body design). Her two main painting themes are those of grass seeds and an encyclopaedic, evolving series entitled My Mother’s Country. Barbara Weir has exhibited widely since the early throughout Australia and internationally.

Her daughters, Teresa Purla and Charmaine Pwerle and a son Freddy Purla, are also painters.

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 the women and are used in a variety of different ways. They can be boiled in water and the liquid used as a drinking medicine. This medicine can ease stomach-ache. The leaves can also be crushed and mixed with Kangaroo Fat to create a salve that is applied to burns.

As a bush woman, Bernadine is familiar with her land and its abundance of bush tucker species, medicine plants and native fauna. These are the stories inherited by her, along with important women’s stories, and which form the basis of her paintings.

Since she started painting in the late 1990s, Bernadine’s work has become more refined and is eagerly sought after by collectors and art enthusiasts throughout Australia and internationally.

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 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 Pwerle’s 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 crisscrossed patterns that are layered across the canvas with colours that are explosive, colourful and energetic.The patterns represent the designs painted on women’s bodies during bush tucker ceremonies in Atnwengerrp.

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 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.

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.

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.

Lizzie Moss Pwerle was born in the early 1940s and is an Alyawarra woman from Atnwengerrp, She is a first cousin to Minnie Pwerle and was part of Utopia’s early batik making projects. In her paintings Lizzie uses a series of intricate dots to portray the movement of Awelye – womens ceremony. The linear work indicates the lines that the women make in the red sand when they dance their stories that belong to Atnwengerrp country. Her work has been included in exhibitions in leading public and private galleries in Australia and internationally.

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.

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 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.

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.

EVERYWHEN Artspace specialises in contemporary Australian Aboriginal art featuring paintings, barks, ochres, ceramics, sculptures and works on paper from 40 + Aboriginal art centres from around Australia.

Directors Susan McCulloch OAM and Emily McCulloch Childs.

EVERYWHEN Artspace 39 Cook Street, Flinders VIC 3929 T: +61 3 5989 0496 E: info@everywhenart.com.au everywhenart.com.au

New Utopia April 8-26, 2022