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.