Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  Purchased from Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory in October 1996
  The Laverty Collection, Sydney
  
  EXHIBITED:
  Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, 26 February - 13 April 2008; National Art Center Tokyo, Japan, 28 May - 28 July 2008; National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 22 August - 12 October 2008
  Laverty 2, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle, 14 May - 14 August 2011
  The Colin and Elizabeth Laverty collection - a selection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous art exhibition, Geelong Gallery, Geelong, 18 February - 15 April 2012
  
  LITERATURE:
  Margo Neale and Benita Tunks (eds.), Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, exh. cat., Tokyo: Yomiuri Shinbun Tokyo Honsha, 2008, (Japanese edition), p.99 and p.101 (illus.), p.239; Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2008 (English edition), p.193 (illus.)
  Colin Laverty, 'Diversity and Strength: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art - A Private Collection', Arts of Asia, November - December 2003, p.88 (illus.)
  Colin Laverty and Elizabeth Laverty et al., Beyond Sacred: Recent Painting from Australia's Remote Aboriginal Communities - the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books, 2008, p.95 (illus.)
  Colin Laverty and Elizabeth Laverty et al., Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art - the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Edition II, Melbourne: Kleimeyer Industries, 2011, p.103 (illus.)
  Djon Mundine, 'Travelling from Utopia', Art Monthly, issue 250 'critical lining', June 2012, p.41 (illus.)
  
  Painted less than two months before she passed away,
  Untitled, 1996, shows that Emily Kame Kngwarreye
  retained her mastery of gestural painting right to
  the end. The work is categorised in the catalogue of
  her Japanese retrospective as one from a series about
  'sacred grasses' (Neale, M. et al, Utopia: The genius of
  Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Osaka: The National Museum
  of Art, 2008, p.199). The connection between the
  subject of Kngwarreye's paintings and her processes
  of paint application seems to be mimetic in character,
  as the sweeps of brush marks evoke tall grass swaying
  in the breeze. The painting does refer tangentially to
  the ripening fruit and flowers of bush plants, as the
  accompanying documentation states, and it concerns
  knowledge of desert ecology and the laws of nature
  that are essential to survival. Moreover, Untitled, 1996,
  possesses a spiritual aspect as it relates to Awely or
  women's ceremonies and ritual songs, and the designs
  painted onto the bodies of women participants.
  Kngwarreye was renowned for her aptitude in
  body painting where the relationship between the
  individual, the design, country and the ancestors
  defines one's identity. Kngwarreye translates
  these attributes to canvas through the span of her
  brushmarks that evoke the physical relationship
  between the painter and the painting.
  
  Wally Caruana
  
  This painting is sold with accompanying Delmore Gallery documentation.

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Category: Fine Art / Aboriginal Art

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