Untitled, from Anwekety (Bush Plum Dreaming) Series, 2009

synthetic polymer paint on linen

151 x 120 cm

Est. $9,000 – $15,000

Hammer $12,000

Provenance: Direct from the artist, NT Lennox Street Gallery, Richmond, Vic, Cat No. KN008
Artwork story: In the Dreamtime, winds blew from all directions across Alhalkere/Alhalpere, carrying the Anwekety seed over ancestral land. The first Anwekety of the Dreaming grew, bore fruit, and dropped more seeds, which the winds carried further across the country. The bush plum/ conkerberry plant became one of the most important food plants of the Anmatyerre people. Women of Kathleen Ngale's country collected and dried the berries, soaking them again before eating, and used the orange inner root bark for skin and eye conditions. Ngale was born at Camel Camp, Utopia, and began her artistic career in the late 1970s as one of more than eighty women who translated their stories into batik textile designs, their work preserved in Utopia: A Picture Story, the landmark 1990 publication of eighty-eight silk batiks from the Robert Holmes à Court Collection. When the women of Utopia moved to acrylic on canvas in 1989, Ngale moved with them. She and her sisters Polly and Angeline Ngale are among the most senior custodians of this Country, and it is their shared responsibility for the land and its Dreaming that gives the Bush Plum series its authority. In this 2009 canvas, Ngale renders the Anwekety Dreaming as a field of continuous movement — deep blue, crimson and soft pink washing across the linen in layered, gestural strokes, the seeds and country becoming a single pulsing presence.

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Sale 3 · Lot 47

Kathleen Ngale

c.1930 – 2021

Region: Eastern Desert
Community: Utopia
Language group: Anmatyerr (Anmatyerre)

Untitled, from Anwekety (Bush Plum Dreaming) Series, 2009

synthetic polymer paint on linen

151 x 120 cm

Est. $9,000 – $15,000

Hammer $12,000

Provenance: Direct from the artist, NT Lennox Street Gallery, Richmond, Vic, Cat No. KN008
Artwork story: In the Dreamtime, winds blew from all directions across Alhalkere/Alhalpere, carrying the Anwekety seed over ancestral land. The first Anwekety of the Dreaming grew, bore fruit, and dropped more seeds, which the winds carried further across the country. The bush plum/ conkerberry plant became one of the most important food plants of the Anmatyerre people. Women of Kathleen Ngale's country collected and dried the berries, soaking them again before eating, and used the orange inner root bark for skin and eye conditions. Ngale was born at Camel Camp, Utopia, and began her artistic career in the late 1970s as one of more than eighty women who translated their stories into batik textile designs, their work preserved in Utopia: A Picture Story, the landmark 1990 publication of eighty-eight silk batiks from the Robert Holmes à Court Collection. When the women of Utopia moved to acrylic on canvas in 1989, Ngale moved with them. She and her sisters Polly and Angeline Ngale are among the most senior custodians of this Country, and it is their shared responsibility for the land and its Dreaming that gives the Bush Plum series its authority. In this 2009 canvas, Ngale renders the Anwekety Dreaming as a field of continuous movement — deep blue, crimson and soft pink washing across the linen in layered, gestural strokes, the seeds and country becoming a single pulsing presence.