Lot 20

EMILY KAM NGWARRAY

Alhalkere, Yam and Water Dreaming 1992
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
90.0 x 121.0 cm

Provenance:
Art Galleries Schubert
Willemsen Private Collection
Private Collection, Qld

Sold with original gallery documentation

During 1992 Emily created a series of works in lush, vibrant colours that were influenced by the changing season, the appearance of rain in profusion, and the emergence of wildflowers carpeting the desert landscape. Her works pulsated with visual intensity rendered in hot pinks, warm oranges, brilliant yellows, and deep blues. Her style at this time featured visible linear tracings, following the tracks of the Kame (Yam), with fields of fine dots partially obscuring symbolic elements and playing across the canvas surface. At this time she was in good health and at the height of her powers as an artist. Her work had been shown in two highly successful shows in Sydney during 1990 as well as the ?Abstraction? show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In that same year she participated in the CAAMA/Utopia artists-in-residence program at the ICA in Perth, and her work was exhibited for the first time with Gabrielle Pizzi, in Melbourne. She was also painting for a number of independent dealers, one of who was the original source of this work. Alan Glaetser ran the Utopia store at the time and later worked for the Central Land Council. He became an important conduit for Emily?s work and arranged for Helen Loveridge to commission a series of six works, of which this particular painting was considered the finest.

This beautiful painting was created early in the same year that Emily became one of 12 Australian artists to be awarded a two year Creative Fellowship. Her fine dotting and symbolic underpainting would soon give way to works in which symbols and tracks were increasingly concealed beneath a sea of dots until, eventually, they were no longer evident at all.

Already, just three years after she began painting, appreciation of her work was coming from international quarters with major pieces adorning chic apartments in Paris, Rome and Madrid. They were included in important exhibitions, which toured to Russia (1991), Japan (1992), and Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark (1993). Despite relatively few solo exhibitions in Australia, other than with Gabrielle Pizzi and Utopia Art Sydney to that time, important Australian artists and collectors increasingly acclaimed her work and many other important galleries showed Emily?s work. Amongst them were Sydney?s Hogarth Galleries, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art, and Barry Stern while in Melbourne her paintings were shown by Flinders Lane Gallery, Alcaston House, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art and Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings.

Auction Title: Aboriginal Art - 3875 - LM

AUCTION
14 November 2007
Sydney

Menzies Art Brands Pty Ltd trading under license as Lawson~Menzies

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