Emily Kame Kngwarreye

(circa 1910-1996)

Anatye - Bush Potato, 1989

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Painted at Delmore Downs Station in November 1989
Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory (cat. DO09 on label attached verso)
Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (cat. EK30I04 on label attached verso)
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
Emily, D'lan Contemporary, New York, 4 - 21 March 2020, cat. 9 (illus.)


Created in the first year of Emily Kame Kngwarreye's painting career, Anatye - Bush Potato, 1989 reveals the intricate form of the underground root of the bush potato (Ipomoea costata). The bush potato plant lies dormant in dry periods until the wet season comes to regenerate it or it is harvested. The dense field of dotting that overlays the root system represents the plant's pink and white flowers. The palette is restricted to traditional body painting colours and is typical of Kngwarreye's early works.

The network of roots symbolises the Dreaming tracks of the Ancestors and has also been interpreted as movements from plant to plant, feeding place to feeding place or camp to camp. During the first year of her career, many of Kngwarreye's paintings featured these artistic devices. Jennifer Isaacs discusses this motif: "At a deeper level the underlying lines may mark out special sites and sacred places along the Dreaming route of the ancestor. The sites are not named. Sometimes such places are water soaks or a natural rocky outctrop, even a stone or a tree, but they mark a place where something happened in the creation times, something along what has been popularly called the 'song line'". 1

As a respected matriarch, Emily was responsible for specific sacred sites and, by extension, the retention and passing on of knowledge about the flora and fauna at these sacred sites and their uses. This knowledge of the natural world in her country forms the central theme of her work: 'The earth itself, the land and its plants, is a woman; the country Emily is expressing is herself. This can be seen in her name alone: Kame meaning yam flower or yam seed.'2

One of Australia's most recognised contemporary artists, Emily's extraordinary career has been acknowledged this year with a major exhibition in Hong Kong staged by world leading contemporary art organisation, Gagosian. Desert Painters of Australia: Two Generations featured seven major paintings by Kngwarreye and was the first Australian Indigenous art exhibition held in the country.

Francesca Cavazzini

1. Jennifer Isaacs et al, Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, p. 21
2. ibid, p. 12