Oliver Morris-Jones
Specialist, Post War & Contemporary Art
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Lot 16AW
EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE(1910-1996)Anooralya II
20 November 2024, 17:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$152,900 inc. premium
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Contemporary Art (US)
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EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910-1996)
Anooralya II
inscribed and dated 'Emily Kngwarreye Commissioned by Delmore Gallery 92 G016 Emily Kngwarreye' (on the reverse); inscribed and dated '92 G016' (on the overlap)
synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen
47 1/4 x 118 1/8 in (120 x 300 cm)
Painted in 1992
inscribed and dated 'Emily Kngwarreye Commissioned by Delmore Gallery 92 G016 Emily Kngwarreye' (on the reverse); inscribed and dated '92 G016' (on the overlap)
synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen
47 1/4 x 118 1/8 in (120 x 300 cm)
Painted in 1992
Footnotes
Provenance
Collection of Don Holt, Utopia, Australia.
Delmore Gallery, Utopia, Australia.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2018.
Emily Kngwarreye's career as a painter commenced only in her final decades; her visual language informed by her long and creative life as an Anmatyerre woman. The subject of this work is Anooralya, a species of wild yam which is an important food source for the Anmatyerre people of the Northern Territory of Australia. Emily Kngwarreye's work explores the entangled subterranean life the plant through each season of its life, her knowledge and ability to find and identify wild desert food marking her as a figure of senior custodial importance. This relationship with the flora and cyclical patterns of life in Kngwarreye's country is so enmeshed in identity that the artist's name, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, contains 'Kame', referencing the flower of the yam plant which blooms after the rains. As noted by Jennifer Issacs in her monograph on the artist (1998) 'All the paintings of Emily Kngwarreye, so spectacular and diverse in style, express a central theme - that of her identification with the earth and land itself: Anmatyerre country, the country of yam and emu.'
The artist's childhood experiences of her country before European presence, the last generation to live a life of seasonal movement and unrestricted cultural practices, form an important foundation for her work as an artist. Kngwarreye powerfully referred to her paintings as being about 'merne,' a word which captures notions of abundance. Accompanying the work is documentation prepared by Donald Holt, whose long relationship with the artist at Delmore Downs provides invaluable insights into Kngwarreye's works:
Anooralya Yam II comes from a period in mid-1992 when Emily was transitioning — experimenting with how to transform the comparative structure of earlier styles (veils of dots and defined lines of yam roots) into a fluid form distilling her Country, Dreaming and the performance of ceremony into one visual lexicon. Anooralya Yam II hones this expression by marking sequential dots to form lines, creating an expanding nexus of yam roots radiating from the centre of the canvas. Emily's choice of colours of significance was key to paintings from the period of 1992.
The predominance of red, yellow, white and green in Anooralya Yam II reflect the mutable colouring of the atnulare yam's delicate Kame flower and its leaves, the flower for which Emily was named. The physical performativity of the harvest and ceremony is clearly displayed across the canvas of the present work. Physically, Emily "reaches into" the centre, tracking lines of dots, reminiscent of the rhythmic digging and scraping of soil to harvest the yam. The rhythm of ceremonial dancing, repetition of song and linear body mark-making of awelye is reflected in her sequential dotting. Stepping further back again, the lines form an aerial view of fertile watercourses in Alhalkere, marking the past summer's movement of water and the yam's ensuing growth.
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