Emily Kam Kngwarray, Utopia artist

The Canberra Times

Part of the The Exhibitionists documentary, on Emily Kam Kngwarray, Utopia artist, Anmatyerre people (1914-1996). Footage courtesy National Gallery of Australia

Transcript

00:00 (gentle music)

00:02 You know, she was in her 70s when she started painting.

00:12 What a legacy.

00:14 (gentle music)

00:26 (gentle music)

00:29 Emily Kim Noiri's work is clearly international

00:45 and extraordinary and well-respected.

00:48 She commands great prizes.

00:50 She was an absolute genius.

00:52 She only worked for about eight years

00:55 at the latter end of her life

00:56 and to have produced the number of canvases,

00:58 oh, I think 3,000, of such extraordinary quality,

01:02 telling her story, talking about her country, Aljekeir,

01:07 but in a way that is universal,

01:09 that in a way that people can respond to around the world.

01:12 So Earth's Creation,

01:21 one of her extraordinary works, paintings,

01:24 was sold for 2.1 million a few years ago.

01:26 That work is the most expensive work ever bought

01:32 by anyone from a woman artist in this country.

01:36 That that work is absolutely contemporary

01:39 of the here and now and vitally important

01:42 as part of the story of modern art.

01:44 Look, this old lady,

01:50 she honestly didn't wanna talk nonsense,

01:53 didn't wanna talk money story,

01:54 didn't wanna talk any of that sort of stuff.

01:56 Emily just wanted to paint, to be left alone,

01:58 and that's what she loved the most.

02:00 She wanted cups of tea with a lot of sugar in it

02:02 and biscuits.

02:03 I was privileged enough to know her as a child

02:07 and grew up watching her paint.

02:09 And I think that's the most extraordinary thing

02:11 about Emily Kemaware's paintings is when you do see them,

02:15 you can feel the sense of the presence of that lady

02:18 in those paintings.

02:19 (gentle music)

02:21 Emily was born on her father's country, Alankara.

02:32 Emily was well and truly into her late 70s

02:41 when she first started painting.

02:43 So this was a woman who had no references

02:46 to modernism or expressionism.

02:49 What came out of Emily Kemaware came out of country.

02:55 Emily Kemaware can stand beside any artist in the world

02:59 and she's been compared to other great abstract painters.

03:03 But the point is, even if her work looks like,

03:06 let's say a Jackson Pollock,

03:08 the sources of it are in her country.

03:11 It's genuinely innovative work

03:15 that does not come from Western painting.

03:18 - I think Emily set the scene

03:23 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island artists

03:25 to follow her in her extraordinary footsteps.

03:29 - Australia, with its great indigenous artists,

03:32 is one of the most innovative places in the world,

03:35 in my view, in terms of what may be the material

03:40 or the subject or the approach within contemporary art.

03:43 It's a hugely open field, an exciting field.

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