About Gloria Petyarre

Gloria Petyarre was born in 1946 at Atnangkere Soakage in the Utopia region of the Northern Territory. She lives at the Anmatyerre community, situated approximately 100 km north of Alice Springs. She is the niece of Emily Kngwarreye and the younger sister of Kathleen Petyarre.

Petyarre moved to the Utopia community sometime after 1977. She was one of the founding members of the Utopia Women's Batik Group, who started a community project titled ‘Utopia – A Picture Story where they started making silk batik paintings using traditional designs. In 1989 Petyarre began work on the 'Summer Project' which involved using acrylic paints to translate her batik images onto canvas. In 1990 she travelled to Ireland, England and India as an ambassador for the exhibition ‘Utopia – A Picture, the following year she held her first solo exhibition.

Petyarre is the custodian of several Dreaming stories including the Pencil Yam, Bean, Emu, and Mountain Devil Lizard. Her unique designs can be monochromatic or multi-coloured abstract fields of bright colours representing the leaves, grasses and body paint. The leaves are her Bush Medicine Leaves; they depict leaves from a plant species which are used for medicinal purposes in traditional healing practices. Looking at her astonishing paintings one can almost see the wind sweeping through the landscape creating the rhythmic movement of flowing grasses.

Petyarre won the Wynne Prize in 1999; becoming the first Indigenous Australian artist ever to win a major art prize at the Gallery of New South Wales.

She is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, British Museum, London, U.K, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Art Gallery of Queensland, Brisbane, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide and in many universities and major collections around the world. She lives and works in Alice Springs.

About Kudditji Kngwarreye

Kudditji Kngwarreye is a senior man from the Eastern Anmatyerre country of Alhalkere on the Utopia homelands and is a custodian of many important Dreaming stories. Utopia is located 240 kilometres north east of Alice Springs formed by the amalgamation of a former pastoral lease and a large area of land to its north. A successful land claim in 1981 over the Utopia station resulted in the community gaining permanent legal title to the land.

Kngwarreye was born around 1928 and is the younger brother of the renowned artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Like most Aboriginal people his age, he lived the traditional hunter and gathering life style and passed through the initiation ceremonies of his people. After contact with European people Kngwarreye adapted to a more western way of life and began working as a stockman and in the gold mining industry.

He has actively painted since 1986. His early paintings were precisely executed dot paintings inspired by the work of the Papunya painters, but it wasn’t long before he developed his own unique style. Kngwarreye started to paint large loose patchwork abstract blocks of saturated colours in some way resembling the American abstract expressionists. Of course this is an observation from an outsider; Kngwarreye had never seen their paintings nor opened an art book or been to a gallery. His later paintings in particular display the vastness of the landscape; he creates this sense of space by using vibrant tonal colours in large geometric forms.

His paintings represent the landscape around Boundary Bore, an outstation in the country for which he is a custodian. Emu Dreaming is one of Kudditji’s inherited ancestral totems; he paints the stories of the travels and law of the Emu ancestors.

Kudditji has gained worldwide recognition for his powerful interpretations of his country and has been represented in many Australian and international exhibitions. In early 2016 he stopped painting and is now living in an aged care facility in Alice Springs.

About Linda Yunkata Syddick Napaltjarri

Linda Syddick was born circa 1937 near Lake Mackay in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia; she speaks Pintupi- and Pitjantjatjara. Her father Rintja Tjungurrayi was killed by a revenge spearing when she was young. Much later her mother Wanala Nangala married Shorty Lungkarta Tjungarrayi, he became an important artist whose work was a significant influence on Linda Syddick's painting.

Syddick was raised in the traditional nomadic lifestyle until her early teenage years when her family walked out of the desert and decided to settle at the Lutheran Mission at Haasts Bluff. Syddick was also taught how to paint by her uncle, Uta Uta Tjangala, also a very important artist and one of the founders of the Papunya Tula artists' company.

Syddick was one of many Western Desert women who took up painting in the early 1990s, as part of a broader contemporary Indigenous Australian art movement.

In her very unique style Syddick paints several stories; her motifs include the Tingari and the Emu Men. The Yellow windmill and ET. The Emu Men were ancestral beings who roamed the landscape during the Dreamtime or Creation Period; they created much of the desert landscape in Central Australia and also instructed people about law and custom. When Syddick and her family were coming out of the desert, they encountered a yellow windmill at Mt Liebig. Never having seen a windmill before and very frightened, they began throwing spears at the structure with no result. After some time they all agreed that this must be a good spirit and something to be embraced. ET the extra-terrestrial was one of the first Hollywood films she saw and related deeply to the story about going home.

Syddick has been a finalist in the Blake Prize (a religious art competition) four times. She has also been represented on several occasions in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

Her works are held by numerous galleries including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Linda Syddick now lives in Alice Springs, her husband has passed away and she paints to support her extended family.

About Yannima Pikarli Tommy Watson

Tommy Watson was born at Anamarapiti, circa 1935 approximately 40 kilometres west of the small community of Irrunytju (also known as Wingellina) Irrunytju is situated in Western Australia near the tri-state border of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory.  Watson is a Pitjantjatjara man, and his skin group is Karimara. He spent his early childhood and teenage years living with his family, travelling from water hole to water hole, hunting and gathering and learning from his father the practical skills on how to survive on their lands in the arid regions of the Gibson Desert. While growing up he learned to understand the significance of social organization and the spiritual and tribal law teachings of his ancestors. Watson also inherited the knowledge on how to find water and food within their region. However, the fate of Watson and his family and many of the other western desert nomads was sealed with the introduction of assimilation policies. This combined with the severe drought throughout the 1950’s resulted in many of the Pitjantjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra and Pintupi Aborigines moving from their home lands to the administrative centres in Warburton, Ernabella and Papunya. The unfamiliar world of the Government settlements was no place for these free nomadic people who were use to a life of unlimited travel, they became disoriented and more than half of the population of these new communities died. Most never adjusted and eventually in the 1970’s and early 1980’s returned to their traditional homelands.

In 2001 Watson was one of the founding artists of the Irrunytju art centre. His work is rich in the knowledge of the topographical landforms of his country and the Tjukurrpa law that underlies it. He paints the stories of his mothers and grandfather’s country recording the sacred dreamtime stories intuitively using large vibrant colourful dots of pinks, burgundy, orange and reds to symbolically represent the dreamtime journeys of the ancient spirits and the significant episodes in the history of his tribe.

 “My grandfather’s country, grandmother’s country. When they were alive, they would take me around the country, when I was a kid. That’s why we look after country, go out whenever we can. See if the rock holes are good”

His most important dreamtime stories are the Great Flood Dreaming, a story of the melting ice that flooded the lands north of the Great Australian Bight. Another story tells of the Pangkalangku, tall man eaters from the north east and his other stories tell of the tribal conflicts between the Pitjantjatjarra and the Yankunyatjarra.

As a young man Watson became a stockman at Mount Ebenezer, and then travelled to Yuendumu where he gained a reputation as an exceptional horseman. He is now a tribal elder and law man and frequently travels widely across the Pitjantjatjara lands to fulfil his traditional obligations. Today he divides his time between the remote community of Warakurna on the edge of the Great Victorian Desert and Alice Springs where he has a house and painting studio. He is widely recognised nationally and internationally and his work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Western Australian Art Gallery, Perth, South Australian Art Gallery, Adelaide and in many important private collections .He was commissioned in 2005 to produce artwork to be permanently installed in the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, France, which opened in 2006. The painting Wipu rockhole (2006) was enlarged and reproduced on stainless steel tiles, which adorn a ceiling within the museum.

About Wentja Morgan Napaltjarri

Wentja Napaltjarri was born at Malparinga in 1945 a rockhole site close to Lake Mackay. Her father was the famous painter Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi; he was also a powerful and sometimes feared ngangkari (traditional doctor). When Wentja Napaltjarri was young, the family travelled across their lands, living the way the Pintupi people had done for thousands of years. Then during the 1940s, Wentja and her family, like others before them, walked out of the desert to Haast Bluff to join relatives who now lived in the small settlement.

Wentja Napaltjarri paints Blue Tongue Lizard, Water Dreaming, Sandhill’s and Rockhole stories. Her iconography has been handed down to her by her father, all her subjects relate to her Pintupi culture. The Sandhill’s and Rockhole paintings represent her Father’s country and are topographical maps of their homelands; they also include references to the metaphysical narratives of the Pintupi’s traditional way of life.

Wentja’s distinctive style displays a mesmerising surface of intricate dots executed using extraordinary precision and consistency. Subtle tonal colours blend with the sometimes dominant iconography of a concentric circle. Her key motif is a large roundel which represents an important rockhole where her family regularly camped.

Napaltjarri has established herself as a major force in the contemporary art market. She exhibited in London in 2008 with an exhibition titled, Masterpieces from the Western Desert and has been a finalist on four occasions in the Telstra National and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award.

For many years Wentja Morgan Napaltjarri lived at Mt Liebig and painted for the Watiyawanu Artists of Amunturrngu. In 2016 she moved into Alice Springs where she paints regularly.

About George Tjungurrayi

George Ward Tjungurrayi was born near the site of Lararra, southeast of Kiwirrkura circa 1945. George Ward is the youngest of three brothers; the late Yala Yala Gibbs (founding member of the Papunya art movement and senior custodian of secret/sacred men business) and Willy Tjungurrayi (one of the most sought after painters of the Western Desert). They were all sons of Pulpalpulpalnga Tjapaltjarri but had different mothers.

George's father died while he was still very young. It was only in his teenage years that he first encountered Europeans, when Jeremy Long's Welfare Branch patrol came upon his family camped by a desert waterhole. After travelling to the government settlement at Papunya - first home of the desert painting movement - Ward worked briefly as a fencer and a butcher in the community kitchen. He also met and married his wife, the somewhat formidable Nangawarra Ward Napurrula (the daughter of Charlie Ward Tjakamarra), a member of one of the desert's most dominant families. They have two children.

Once their first child was born, the couple moved west to Warburton, then on through the ranges to Docker River and to Warakurna. In 1981 George and his family moved to the newly established Pintupi capital of Walungurru (Kintore) which is across the NT border, in the looming shadow of Mount Leisler, where they still spend time today.

George observed the work of his brothers Yala Yala and Willy Tjungurrayi, who were among Papunya's Tula's leading artists in Walungurru. In 1984 George Ward first painted on canvas: a handful of elegantly "classical" concentric roundel works from that time survive. After the death of his brother, Yala Yala in 1998, the responsibility to paint fell squarely on Ward's shoulders. By this stage, he was a senior desert man: He lived deep in the world of law. He began to paint in earnest, developing his own distinct style. The canvases he began producing for Alice Springs-based Papunya Tula artists were like nothing else that had come before in the desert art movement: sombre, cerebral, full of grave intellect.

The big lake site of Kaakuratintja (Lake Macdonald), which a large group of Tingari men travelled through on their way east, is often the subject of his paintings. His meticulous geometric drawing is often offset by more rapid, shaking dotting to produce a shimmering surface. In 2004 George won the prestigious 2004 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. George has also exhibited in many galleries throughout the past decade.

George Ward is a reticent and silent Western Desert man. These character traits can cause the odd practical problem, now that he has become one of the nation's most admired and most keenly collected artists. He's not at home in English; sees no merit in photographs; is uneasy in big, bustling towns like Alice Springs. "I'm a bush man, me," he insists, with a distinct, proud edge in his voice.

Source: https://www.kateowengallery.com/artists/Geo21/George-Ward-Tjungurrayi.htm

About Jorna Newberry

Jorna Newberry is a Pitjantjatjara artist who was born around 1959 in Angus Downs. She currently splits her time between Alice Springs, where her family live, and Warakurna choosing to live between modern culture and a more traditional one of her Indigenous heritage.

When Jorna is in her lands, she often goes bush with the women of the community for sacred ceremonies, passing on the knowledge of her heritage onto her two daughters. When she goes camping, she hunts for kangaroo and goanna and collects bush tucker such as honey ants, witchetty grubs and berries.

Her style is multi-layered and abstract to maintain the secrecy of important culture matters. She has worked closely with her Uncle, Tommy Watson and developed her own style.

"Tommy has had a big influence on me. He teaches me to be respectful in the way I paint" she says, favouring a more abstract approach to her work rather than the figurative approach of the Papunya Tula artists.

Jorna initially started painting in the mid-1990s at Warakurna. Her paintings refer to the country of Irrunytju in the Western desert and the significant places, traditionally of spiritual knowledge and the ancestral stories, which are in bedded in the land.

Tommy Watson has described Irruntyju as, "My grandfather's country, grandmother's country. When they were alive, they would take me around the country, when I was a kid. That dreamtime country. That's why we look after the country, go out whenever we can, see if the rock-holes are good".

Tjukurpa (Wind Dreaming) is a story of her mother's country at Utantja, a large stretch of sacred land where people go for ceremonial rites. "The wind ceremony forms winds, creates air to cool the lands," she says, explaining that the cooler the land gets, the easier it is for hunting.

Newberry uses a very vibrant and dramatic palette in her artworks; the canvases are alive with linear dotted flows that describe movement, culture and history.

Source: https://kateowengallery.com/artists/Jor635/Jorna-Newberry.htm