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Lot 1
Emily Kame Kngwarreye(1910-1996)Awelye, 1991
26 August 2025, 18:00 AEST
SydneySold for AU$47,970 inc. premium
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Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996)
Awelye, 1991
inscribed verso with the artist's name and Mulga Bore Artist's cat. 62.1091
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
178.0 x 36.0cm (70 1/16 x 14 3/16in).
inscribed verso with the artist's name and Mulga Bore Artist's cat. 62.1091
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
178.0 x 36.0cm (70 1/16 x 14 3/16in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Commissioned by Rodney Gooch, Mulga Bore Artists, Alice Springs
Chapman Gallery, Canberra
Private collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above in 1992
LITERATURE
Donald Williams, In Our Own Image: The Story of Australian Art, Third Edition, McGraw-Hill, Sydney, 1995, pp. 12–13 (illus.) as 'Dreamings'
This painting is accompanied by documentation from Delmore Gallery which reads:
'Emily described her paintings as "whole lot, thats all, whole lot, my dreaming." Her dreamings are Pencil Yam, Mountain Devil Lizard, Grass seed, Tingu a dreamtime dingo pup, Emu & Kame, a munyeroo seed. The surface pattern represents the munyeroo seed.'
The National Gallery of Australia's exhibition Emily Kam Kngwarray: Alhalkere, Paintings from Utopia' provided this overview of the artist's Awelye paintings, 'Kngwarray first became a painter as a young woman embarking upon her ritual education. She learnt about awelye designs while painting on the bodies of women about to take part in a ceremony. Awelye refers to the ceremonial world of women, or women's business, and includes women's ceremonial body designs. It also might refer to a particular ceremony and the designs songs and dances associated with it. The striped design painted on the breasts and neckline of ceremonial dancers seems to be the inspirational starting point for many of Kngwarray's paintings.
Ceremonial cycles are held for individual ancestors. In 1990 Kngwarray listed the following designs as those over which she had authority:
Arlatyeye (pencil yam); Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard); Ntange (grass seed); Tingu (dingo pup); Ankerre (emu); Intekwe (plant that emus like); Antwerle (green bean) and Kame (yam seed). That's what I paint; whole lot.
Only the component parts are listed, not the complex interrelationship between them. 'Whole lot', which alone can be experienced through her painting, is her entire body of knowledge communicated subconsciously through the interplay of line, colour, movement, space and light.'