My Country, 1995

synthetic polymer paint on linen

149 x 201 cm

Est. $80,000 – $100,000

Hammer $65,000

Provenance: Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Vic, Cat No. FLG/DGEK/1995 Private Collection, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Flinders Lane Gallery signed by Sonia Heitlinger
Exhibited: Recent Paintings from Utopia: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre, Barbara Weir, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Vic, 1996
Artwork story: Horizontal bands of sky blue, warm ochre, and deep rust move in parallel across the full width of this large canvas, and through them fine dotted marks cascade diagonally like rain moving on wind. My Country 1995 belongs to the period in which Kngwarreye turned with full authority to the stripe compositions derived directly from awelye, the ceremonial body painting designs of Anmatyerre women. As Christopher Hodges of Utopia Art Sydney observed, in her terms there is no distinction between dot-filled landscapes and striped body paintings: the two modes are one continuous act of Country-making. The tradition Kngwarreye brought to canvas had deep roots — in the body paint designs of ceremony, in the marks awelye demanded across a lifetime, in a practice sustained through decades before her first canvas in 1989. The stripe works are among the most formally radical of her career and among the most culturally precise, each band of colour a direct transposition of the designs painted on women's bodies in ceremony.

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Sale 3 · Lot 66

c.1910 – 1996

synthetic polymer paint on linen

149 x 201 cm

Est. $80,000 – $100,000

Hammer $65,000

Provenance: Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Vic, Cat No. FLG/DGEK/1995 Private Collection, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Flinders Lane Gallery signed by Sonia Heitlinger
Exhibited: Recent Paintings from Utopia: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre, Barbara Weir, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Vic, 1996
Artwork story: Horizontal bands of sky blue, warm ochre, and deep rust move in parallel across the full width of this large canvas, and through them fine dotted marks cascade diagonally like rain moving on wind. My Country 1995 belongs to the period in which Kngwarreye turned with full authority to the stripe compositions derived directly from awelye, the ceremonial body painting designs of Anmatyerre women. As Christopher Hodges of Utopia Art Sydney observed, in her terms there is no distinction between dot-filled landscapes and striped body paintings: the two modes are one continuous act of Country-making. The tradition Kngwarreye brought to canvas had deep roots — in the body paint designs of ceremony, in the marks awelye demanded across a lifetime, in a practice sustained through decades before her first canvas in 1989. The stripe works are among the most formally radical of her career and among the most culturally precise, each band of colour a direct transposition of the designs painted on women's bodies in ceremony.