Literature in our Collection
(M-Z)

Neale, Margo (Hg.): Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Alhalkere. Paintings from Utopia, Macmillan, Melbourne 1998, ISBN 0646349299

Table of Contents        ¦         Cover Text        ¦         Book Review

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements -1-

Doug Hall: Preface -3-

Margo Neal: Introduction -5-

Anne Marie Brody: Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Portrait from the Outside -9-

Margo Neale: Two Worlds: One Vision -23-

Christopher Hodges: Alhalkere -33-

Judith Ryan: 'In the beginning is my end': The Singular Art of Emily Kame Kngwarreye -39-

Roger Benjamin: A New Modernist Hero -47-

Philip Morrissey: Emily Kame Kngwarreye Meets the Metropolitan -55-

Catalogue of Works -59-

Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Exhibition History -146-

Notes on the Authors -150-

Select Bibliography -152-

Glossary and Map -154-

Cover Text

Born in her 'country', Alhalkere, on the edge of Utopia, ca. 1910 and raised as a traditional central Australian Aboriginal woman, Emily Kame Kngwarreye's life bridged most of this century and all the historical conditions and events that have shaped Aboriginal aspirations today. Millennia of rich tradition and urgent contemporary demands collided in the brilliant eight-year painting career of this extraordinary artists - a relatively isolated desert dweller who began painting on canvas only as she neared her ninth decade. The immediate, vibrant and uninhibited vision of her works - in which at least five or six distinctive but related stylistic variations can be identified - has been compared with that of renowened European, American and Australian Abstract Expressionists whose philosophies and cultural contexts could not be more different. That her paintings communicate across cultures, and have elicited national and international acclaim, gives rise to critical and interpretive issues which are addressed by Margo Neale and the contributing authors. All agree, however, that the power of Kngwarreye's painting is more than matched by the strength and dignity of the woman herself. Because the underlying theme of Kngwarreye's paintings is Alhalkere - and all that 'country' represented to a senior Anmatyerre woman such as herself - Macmillan has attempted to echo the surrounding landscape's enormity, sublimity and unifying presence in the design of the book. Editor/designer Professor Jenny Zimmer and her colleagues have arranged the book to emphasise the sheer energy and bravado of Kngwarreye's remarkable paintings. The gestural brushmarks - whether dots, patches, stripes of organically interwoven webs of colour relating mainly to women's ceremonies, body-designs and Alhahlkere - communicate directly and unequivocally. Kngwarreye's instinct for composition is rarely matched. She surely ranks among the major abstract painters of this century. Kngwarreye's brilliance was widely recognised in 1997 when her paintings were included in Australia's contribtion to the Venice Biennale. In 1998 the Queensland Art Gallery's major survey exhibition, drawn from fifty-eight public and private collections, will travel to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria. It re-affirms, for broader Australian audiences, Kngwarreye's innate capabilities and the myterious power of her images.