Kameradda, 1996

88 x 59 cm

Est. $5,000 – $8,000

Hammer $5,000

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Balgo, Cat No. 635/96 Private Collection, Melbourne Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 23 November 2008, Lot 134 Helen Read Collection, Melbourne Sims Dickson Collection D’Lan Davidson, Melbourne, acquired June 2020 Private Collection, Albany NY
Artwork story: Millie Skeen was part of the powerful wave of senior women artists whose paintings in the 1990s carried forward Kukatja narratives of Country with a distinctive boldness of palette and composition. Kameradda, is located in the Great Sandy Desert. In this work it vibrates with colour and rhythm, its fields of stippled dots enclosing dynamic red and white motifs that seem to hover between ancestral form and abstract gesture. The painting’s concentric structures echo ceremonial ground designs, while the intensity of the palette—earth ochres, blazing reds, and the sudden brilliance of blue—speaks to the desert’s drama and Skeen’s assured hand. Skeen’s works are held in the collections of major institutions, including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and are admired for their vivid interpretation of Kukatja cosmology and Country. This canvas, painted in 1996, encapsulates her confident late style, just one year before her passing.

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Sale 2 · Lot 46

Millie Skeen Nampitjin

c.1932 – 1997

88 x 59 cm

Est. $5,000 – $8,000

Hammer $5,000

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Balgo, Cat No. 635/96 Private Collection, Melbourne Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 23 November 2008, Lot 134 Helen Read Collection, Melbourne Sims Dickson Collection D’Lan Davidson, Melbourne, acquired June 2020 Private Collection, Albany NY
Artwork story: Millie Skeen was part of the powerful wave of senior women artists whose paintings in the 1990s carried forward Kukatja narratives of Country with a distinctive boldness of palette and composition. Kameradda, is located in the Great Sandy Desert. In this work it vibrates with colour and rhythm, its fields of stippled dots enclosing dynamic red and white motifs that seem to hover between ancestral form and abstract gesture. The painting’s concentric structures echo ceremonial ground designs, while the intensity of the palette—earth ochres, blazing reds, and the sudden brilliance of blue—speaks to the desert’s drama and Skeen’s assured hand. Skeen’s works are held in the collections of major institutions, including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and are admired for their vivid interpretation of Kukatja cosmology and Country. This canvas, painted in 1996, encapsulates her confident late style, just one year before her passing.