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Kathleen Petyarre

DOB: c. 1940

BORN: Atnangkere
LANGUAGE GROUP: Eastern Anmatyerre
COMMUNITY: Utopia, Northern Territory

Kathleen Petyarre (c. 1940–24 November 2018) was born at Atnangkere, an important water soakage for Aboriginal people on the western boundary of Utopia Station, 240kms north-east of Alice Springs. She belonged to the Alyawarre/Eastern Anmatyerre clan and spoke Eastern Anmatyerre, with English as her second language. Petyarre was the niece of the influential Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye and had several sisters who are also well-known artists in their own right, among them Gloria, Violet, Myrtle and Jeanna Petyarre. Kathleen, with her daughter Margaret and her sisters, settled at Iylenty (Mosquito Bore) at Utopia Station, near her birthplace.

 

Petyarre's technique consisted of layering very fine dots of thin acrylic paint onto the canvas, evoking the Aboriginal custom of ceremonial body painting, to carefully construct abstract landscapes that reveal a remarkable depth when viewed up close. The dots are used to represent, among other things, flowers and spinifex, or animated clouds of sand, hail or even bush seeds. Meanwhile, various shapes and colours are used to depict geographical features such as sand-hills, watercourses and rockholes. Her imagery has been described as "simultaneously macro- and microcosmic".

 

The majority of Petyarre's paintings detail the journeys of her Dreaming Ancestor, Arnkerrth, the Old Woman Mountain Devil, and are indicative of traditional land navigation skills. She adopted an aerial view typical of her region's artworks to reconstruct memorised landscapes and express her Dreamings as "a barely tangible, shadowy palimpsest, overwritten, as it were, by the surface colours and movement". She described her paintings as "like looking down on my country during the hot time, when the country changes colour … I love to make the painting like it’s moving, travelling, but it’s still our body painting, still our ceremony.”

Her considerable reputation as one of Australia's most original Indigenous artists was confirmed by her regular inclusion in exhibitions at renowned international museums and galleries. A book about her art, Genius of Place, was published in 2001 in conjunction with a solo exhibition of her works at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, and her paintings can be found in public and private collections all over the world. Her work was selected, along with just a handful of Aboriginal artists, for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. 

 

Kathleen's paintings are also held in the Royal Collection of HM Queen Elizabeth II; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France; AAMU Museum voor hedendaagse Aboriginal kunst (Museum for Contemporary Aboriginal Art), Utrecht, The Netherlands; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, Australia; the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, University of Virginia, USA; the Essl Collection, Vienna, Austria; the Holmes à Court Collection, Perth; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

Kathleen Petyarre painting

Title: Mountain Devil Lizard

Artist: Kathleen Petyarre

Acrylic on canvas

Painted: 2010

Size: 100cm x 100cm approximately

Catalogue number: CAA15637

Price: $15,000.00

Provenance: Central Aboriginal Artists > Private Collection

Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

Kathleen Petyarre painting

Title: My Country

Artist: Kathleen Petyarre

Acrylic on canvas

Painted: 2011

Size: 90cm x 60cm approximately

Catalogue number: KP011-1

Price: $15,000.00

Provenance: Australiart2 > Private Collection

Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

WEL-KP-A
WEL-KP-A.jpg

Title: Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming

Artist: Kathleen Petyarre

Acrylic on canvas

Painted: 2006

Size: 125cm x 125cm approximately

Catalogue number: AMA/KP232/06

Price: POA

Provenance: Aboriginal and Modern Art Gallery of Australia (AMAGOA) > Private Collection

Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

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