EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE – ABORIGINAL ART
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Artist Profile · Northern Territory
Emily Kame Kngwarreye
Utopia elder who began painting in her late seventies and became one of Australia’s greatest artists.
Lived
c. 1910 – 1996
Language group
Anmatyerre
Country
Alhalkere, Utopia region, NT
Also spelled
Emily Kam Kngwarray
Life
Emily Kame Kngwarreye was born around 1910 at Alhalkere, in the Utopia region of Central Australia. She was raised on the land in the traditional way, spoke Anmatyerre, and first met Europeans as a child around 1919.
A senior woman and custodian of the Dreamings of her Country, including the Kame (yam) for which she was named, she was a founding member of the Utopia Women’s Batik Group in the late 1970s. She passed away in September 1996.
A late, extraordinary career
Emily took up painting on canvas in 1988–89, when she was in her late seventies, through the Summer Project that introduced acrylic painting to the women of Utopia. Her first solo exhibition of paintings was held at Coventry Gallery, Sydney, in 1990.
Her extraordinary gift for colour was recognised almost immediately by critics and collectors. In just eight years she produced thousands of works, moving from particular subjects to a lively, shifting abstraction of her whole world, where colours merge and change form to carry a powerful sense of Country and the Dreaming.
Alhalkere (My Country)
Awelye (Women’s Ceremony)
Batik
Highlights
- Australian Artists Creative Fellowship, awarded by the Australian Government (1992)
- Represented Australia at the Venice Biennale (1997)
- Major collections of her work acquired by public galleries from the mid-1990s; Earth’s Creation (1994) is among the most celebrated Australian paintings
- Major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia (2023–24), touring to Tate Modern, London (2025)
Related artists
Kudditji Kngwarreye (brother) · Kathleen Petyarre (niece) · Gloria Petyarre (niece)
Buying Emily’s work
Emily’s paintings are among the most valuable in Aboriginal art and among the most frequently faked. Buy only through a reputable auction house or gallery, with a certificate of authenticity and full, documented provenance.
Works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye on eBay
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