Grass Seed Dreaming, 2004

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

200 x 130 cm

Est. $6,000 – $8,000

Hammer $6,500

Provenance: Mbantua Gallery, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. MB23158 Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: Barbara Weir was born in 1940 at Atnwengerrp, Bundy River Station, in the remote Utopia region of Central Australia approximately 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs, the daughter of the celebrated painter Minnie Pwerle and an Irish station owner named Jack Weir. From the age of two she was hidden from welfare patrols by her grandmother Emily Kame Kngwarreye. She was taken from her family as a child while collecting water at Utopia Station, becoming part of the Stolen Generations, and passed through a succession of foster homes and institutions across Alice Springs, Victoria and Darwin. She was told her mother was dead. It was not until 1968 that she found her way back — a return not only to family but to Country, language and cultural knowledge. She came to painting in the 1990s, encouraged by her son Fred Torres, and developed a style of layered, gestural abstraction that stood apart from the dot and linear traditions of the Central Desert while remaining rooted in the Dreamings of Atnwengerrp. Her Grass Seed Dreaming series are her most recognised bodies of work. At 200 x 130 cm this 2004 canvas gives the series full expansive weight: dense, radiating brushstrokes in deep ochre and warm copper move across the surface from a dark central mass, the growth of grass seed across country after rain rendered as pure atmospheric force.

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Sale 3 · Lot 13

c.1945 – 2023

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

200 x 130 cm

Est. $6,000 – $8,000

Hammer $6,500

Provenance: Mbantua Gallery, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. MB23158 Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: Barbara Weir was born in 1940 at Atnwengerrp, Bundy River Station, in the remote Utopia region of Central Australia approximately 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs, the daughter of the celebrated painter Minnie Pwerle and an Irish station owner named Jack Weir. From the age of two she was hidden from welfare patrols by her grandmother Emily Kame Kngwarreye. She was taken from her family as a child while collecting water at Utopia Station, becoming part of the Stolen Generations, and passed through a succession of foster homes and institutions across Alice Springs, Victoria and Darwin. She was told her mother was dead. It was not until 1968 that she found her way back — a return not only to family but to Country, language and cultural knowledge. She came to painting in the 1990s, encouraged by her son Fred Torres, and developed a style of layered, gestural abstraction that stood apart from the dot and linear traditions of the Central Desert while remaining rooted in the Dreamings of Atnwengerrp. Her Grass Seed Dreaming series are her most recognised bodies of work. At 200 x 130 cm this 2004 canvas gives the series full expansive weight: dense, radiating brushstrokes in deep ochre and warm copper move across the surface from a dark central mass, the growth of grass seed across country after rain rendered as pure atmospheric force.