Shining the Spotlight on 3 Influential Female Aboriginal Artists of the Century
2020 Feb 06th
Shining the Spotlight on 3 Influential Female Aboriginal Artists of the Century - Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Minnie Pwerle and Gloria Tamerre Petyarre.
Aboriginal culture is thought to date back further than 60,000 years, making it the oldest surviving culture on Earth. Art has always been an essential part of the Indigenous peoples’ lives as it is a vibrant form of language, used to pass down their knowledge, ideas, and stories. In this blog, Mbantua highlights three Aboriginal artists who made outstanding contributions and helped to build popularity in wider communities for this dazzling and vibrant style of artistic expression.
Though Minnie’s artistic career only lasted approximately seven years, she produced over 4000 paintings and immediately captured the attention of many collectors around the world. Her artworks depict her land of Atnwengerrp in linear, rhythmic designs with alternating widths, colours, and patterns. Symbols of bush fruit and bush melons are prevalent in Minnie’s art, shown as winding, concentric circles. These motifs are representative of the Aboriginal body paintings applied to women’s upper torsos during traditional tribal ceremonies and create bold and fluid art pieces.
Emily’s career as a painter also lasted a relatively short time of eight years, though she produced a similarly vast number of paintings in that time, somewhere in the realm of 4000-5000. The Utopia-based artist initially painted on batik cloth but switched to canvas due to the amount of labour involved in boiling the wax out of the batik fabric to make it workable, as well as her diminishing eyesight. She was known to leave her finished paintings without inspecting the final product or naming them. Her art features long, winding lines, heavy use of dots, and overlayed colours that provides an incredible feeling of depth and vivid brilliance.
Like many of the other women in her community, Gloria first started her art career in the Women’s Batik Group, which was launched by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association. She transferred the art style she used while working with the batik cloth to the canvas, specialising in creating feather-like markings with heavy lines and wide brush strokes. Gloria’s paintings vary between monochromatic and bright multicoloured palettes. Her works are often inspired by Dreamtime stories and consist of well-defined but abstract segments that evoke a fascinating sense of rippling movement.
To learn more about the many talented Aboriginal artists, browse the artist profiles on Mbantua’s website. You can also shop our range to buy Australian art online, or for more information, enquire online.