Winner of the 34^th Alice Prize 2006, the Anmatyerre artist Billy Benn was taught painting by his older sisters, Utopia artists Ally and Gladdy Kemarre, known for their colourful paintings often depicting flowers and women’s ceremonies.

Born around 1943 on his father’s country of Artetyerre (Harts Range) in Central Australia, his work has risen to prominence through his beautifully rendered small landscape paintings.

The gentleness of his paintings give little hint of the difficult life of the artist, who began work in mica mines at age 10, and whose experiences include accusations of murder of a man in 1967 – for which he was later acquitted on the grounds of insanity. He spent years working as a sheet metal worker, painting on wooden boards, often discarded by the Alice Springs Timber Mill.

His effective depiction of landscape, described by Cath Bowdler as ‘wonderful and intimate renditions of a remembered and loved country. Fresh, moving and raw’, is the result of his meditative focus on his land, his knowledge of its dreamings, which include antenhe (possum) and corroborees, combined with an artistic talent inherited from his father, who was a skilled carver.

In their depiction of the unique and stunningly beautiful mountain ranges and eucalypts of Central Australia, Benn’s landscapes recall the paintings of master landscape painter Albert Namatjira, yet are also very much his own. Especially notable is his ability to encapsulate a great depth of field on small surface (most of Benn’s canvases average between 20-30 centimetres). A founding member of Mwerre Anthurre Artists (Bindi Inc.), an Alice Springs arts centre established to provide employment and artistic expression for disabled Aboriginal people, Benn’s work first came to attention in 2000 in exhibitions in Alice Springs, in particular the annual Desert Mob exhibition at Araluen. His work has also been exhibited in Darwin at Karen Brown Gallery; in Melbourne at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Alcaston Gallery and Alison Kelly Gallery; and Alice Springs, at Gallery Gondwana. Leading public exhibitions in which his work has been seen include 2004: Australian Culture Now, National Gallery of Victoria Australia, 2004; and From Little Things Big Things Grow, NGA, 2004.

Antiques & Art In Victoria

April-August, 2003

From the ancient rites and song cycles of the Pintupi, the remote Western Desert language group, (several of whom were still living in the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts right up until the later 20^th century), come the contemporary paintings of Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, Walala Tjapaltjarri and Thomas Tjapaltjarri.

These three brothers made international headlines in 1984 when they arrived out of the desert at Kiwirrkura, a Pintupi settlement near the boarder of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. They can now be counted alongside Australia’s most interesting artists, having been involved in many exhibitions in Australia and overseas.

Their wonderful, seemingly abstract designs, derived from body painting, ground painting and the decoration of traditional artefacts, are being increasingly well received in Australia.

They first made contact with Europeans when they appeared under Kiwirrkura’s water tower in October 1984. A group of nine, it included three women who are now artists, Yakultji Napaltjarri, Yalti Napangardi and Takarria Napaltjarri. Two of the ‘nomads’,Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri and his other brother Pierti Tjapaltjarri (who went back into the desert and became a myth until re-appearing at Ti Tree), had previously approached two the men from Kiwirrkura, the famous artist Pinta Pinta Tjapanangka and his son, at hills north of the settlement: a place called Winparrku.

Tjapanangka and his son, fearing the nomads were ‘Kadaitcha men’, or retribution killers, panicked, scaring off the desert nomads. But these people were relatives of theirs, not seen since the 1950s when most Pintupi had come in to the government reserves. As part of traditional Pintupi law, the nomads had come to make contact with their relatives to perform ‘sorry business’, a mourning process, for a relative who had died. The Pintupi from Kiwirrkura tracked them down and eventually they ‘came in’ from the desert, for good.

Several years later Warlimpirrnga, the eldest of the men, took up a paintbrush after observing artists painting at Kiwirrkura. His first eleven works, exhibited in Melbourne, were bought and donated to the National Gallery of Victoria now NGV Ian Potter Centre for Contemporary Art at Federation Square, a gallery which places Aboriginal art on a worldwide stage. This will no doubt increase local interest in an art movement that has long been held in high-regard by those overseas, particularly Europeans and Americans, who have collected and mounted exhibitions of these works with a vigour that we in Australia should attempt to attain.

Perhaps these Western Desert works, which can be seen as being both representations of an important ancient culture and a fascinating contemporary, seemingly abstract art, are more readily accepted by an audience familiar with Abstract Expressionism and Abstract Minimalist art. In Australia we have never really had a very strong Abstract Expressionist art movement as has the United States, tending to rely on figurative, landscape or narrative works, In fact, it has been argued very convincingly that our greatest Abstract Expressionist artists are Aboriginal artists. They are also Australia’s greatest landscape artists; being the only indigenous people, they have the authority and knowledge to paint the land in a way in which no-one else can. Their ochre paintings are not only depictions of land, they are the land, having been created from the earth itself.

One look at these three artists certainly confirms this view. Their works mostly consist of line work and geometric forms, with the more recognisable ‘dots’ so familiar to us as the major feature of Aboriginal Desert art often used to highlight the lines, as in the early Papunya Tula boards, rather than to fill in the canvas.

The eldest of the skilled draughtsmen in paint is Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri. He was born east of Kiwirrkura in the late 1950s. His paintings depict Tingari stories for his country which is around the sites of Marua and Kanapilya. The Tingari Cycle is a series of secret-sacred mythological songs that are associated with many places throughout Pintupi land, which covers the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts.

One of his works in Nangara, the Ebes Collection, is a classic example of the Tingari Cycle as represented in Pintupi art. Entitled ‘Tingari at Wala Wala’, this 1995 painting Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay). In mythological times, a group of Tingari men and women travelled to this site to perform ceremonies. Warlimpirrnga has painted roundels, representing rock holes in the country through which they passed, and straight and sinuous lines, which are body paint designs. He creates other paintings derived straight from ancient Pintupi mythology, such as a ‘Bushfire at Wilkinkarra’ and a ‘Dingo Dreaming at Marawa’.

Walala Tjapaltjarri’s work, like all Pintupi painting, represents the travels, camps and activities of the Tingari people in mythological times. Born in about 1960, he was instructed by Warlimpirrnga in the use of acrylic paints, and paints his inherited Dreaming sites. These include eleven sites, located throughout his country near Wilkinkarra. They are Marua, Minatarnpi, Tarrku, Njami and Yarrawangu as well as Mina Mina, an important women’s site made famous by Warlpiri artist Dorothy Napangardi Robinson.

Walala’s works often relate to the ancestral Tingari men’s initiation rites (called malliera) held in the Gibson Desert. Like other great masters of contemporary Aboriginal art, such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Rover Thomas, Walala often used a bi-chromatic colour scheme that is simultaneously incredibly contemporary and also ancient.

His younger brother Thomas Tjapaltjarri, born at Murruwa, east of Kiwirrkura, sometime in the 1970s, started painting once he reached the correct age. Like many Aboriginal artists, he depicts his birthplace in his paintings. Marruwa has ‘tali tjuta’ many sand hills and also contains imagery, like Walala’s works, associated with malliera. This he inherits from his Tjungurrayi father and his Tjapaltjarri grandfather. I find his work to be as compelling as his brothers’, if not even more so, not just for the exquisite beauty of some of his paintings, but also for the variety of styles he is capable of painting in.

Pintupi art is undisputedly one of the most important art movements to have happened in Australia over the past 30 years. The desert art movement which began at Papunya in 1971 was largely comprised of Pintupi men, now all deceased. Their great spirits and knowledge of the land are remembered only in the few public galleries and museums where this work can be viewed, or seen once a year when they appear for tens or even hundred of thousands of dollars in the Aboriginal art auctions. Their remaining wives, sisters and daughters are continuing their mission, to preserve in paint the laws and mythology of the Pintupi those ‘great free men of the Gibson Desert’, as Geoffrey Bardon called them. Very few of their sons and grandsons are painters, not willing or able to keep up the traditions.

The three Tjapaltjarris paint designs which have been passed down for thousands of years unchanged; evidence of an important and unique civilisation that has survived at the end of the 20^th century in one of the harshest terrains known to humankind.

Originally appeared in Antiques & Art in Victoria December 2002- April 2003

In the last year or so, a new name has come to the attention of aficionados of Aboriginal art – Minnie Pwerle. An Anmatyerre/Alyawarre artist hailing from the now famous Central Desert area of Utopia, this artist has become something of a ‘known secret in the Aboriginal art world.’[i] With her rising popularity, collectability, her age (around 80 years) and her work itself, which is based on women’s body paint designs, come the inevitable comparisons to that other great dame of the bush, the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye who was an Eastern Anmatyerre woman.

These two artists share certain similarities. Yet one could argue that they are also distinct artists in their own right, and that much of these similarities are more a result of their shared culture and family relationship than anything else. What is certain, however, is that Minnie is as close to ‘another Emily’ as we are ever going to get,[ii] now that Kngwarreye has passed away.

The similarities between these two artists are important. Firstly, they are relatives. Kngwarreye was Minnie’s cousin through marriage (in the Aboriginal classificatory sense, her sister), and they shared many aspects of ceremonial life at Utopia. Present in both their works is the dominance of ‘bush tucker’ as subject matter, whether it is the bush melon of Minnie’s work or the different kinds of yams in Emily’s. These plants find their expression in the special body paint designs which women paint on the breasts and upper arms for Awelye, or women’s ceremonies. They are totemic design related to the creation of each woman’s ‘country’, or inherited area of land: land that has been passed down through generations of Anmatyerre/Alyawarre people for thousands of years.

These artists are remembering the spirits of the ancestors who created this land, the songlines they travelled as they created, and the sacred places where they rested or gathered. Each artist’s country is of the utmost importance to her. It is her spiritual and social identity. It is the essence of who she is.

The major difference between Emily and Minnie is that they did not share the same country. Emily was ‘boss woman’ for Alhalkere, her country that was celebrated in her retrospective exhibition, so much so that the curator gave it as the exhibition’s title. Yet, Alhalkere is not the only area at Utopia that has been celebrated in paint. One must remember that there are five land-holding clans on Utopia.
Minnie’s country is Atnwengerrp, where the once abundant bush melon (a sweet fruit) grows. Minnie only paints three subjects. Her Awelye-Atnwengerrp is a series of bold lines painted against a black or coloured background. These are the works which are most similar to Emily’s, particularly her body paint works such as the Utopia panels; they also recall artists such as Tony Tuckson. Bush Melon works involve circles depicting the fruit and breast paint designs belonging to the Pwerle skin group, and lastly Bush Melon Seed, which incorporates smaller roundels of colour.
Emily, on the other hand, had about nine dreamings, as expressed in her famous ‘whole lot’ statement,[iii] although they are all simply aspects as Christopher Hodges has noted, of her country.[iv] In an Aboriginal art market with its demand for explanatory ‘stories’ for non-Indigenous people to ‘understand’ the art, she never ‘gave story’ (see Judith Ryan’s essay in the Alhalkere catalogue). She is, in this regard, a thorough post-modernist, refusing to give ‘explanations’ for her work: rather she always claimed that they were simply about ‘her country’. In this regard Emily is now seen as one of our finest landscape painters.

Minnie is similar. To her, her paintings are Awelye, ceremonial designs that cover every aspect of the connection to her land. She, too, has an independent spirit and has never made a coolamon or a clapstick, has never painted typical ‘Aboriginal style’ paintings with U-shapes representing women or the more recognisable Aboriginal iconography. She, like Emily, has stuck to her own expression, no matter what those around her may think of it.

Minnie’s paintings can almost be seen as a continuation of Emily’s work, in terms of her brilliance as an artist. They have taken abstract art to a new level. We are not only seeing the land of the painter expressed through a symbolic, totemic design – a process by which we could be seen to be undergoing a shifting of perspective – a different way of seeing art,[v] – we are viewing the work of a great modern artist who is breaking ground in Australian painting.In much the same way that it has been noted that Emily ‘had solved all the problems of Impressionism and captured the essence of pure sensation in a way that Monet, on his own admission, had struggled to achieve throughout his career’[vi] Minnie is continuing (without being aware of it in a theoretical sense) the work of such Australian abstractionists as Tony Tuckson and Ian Fairweather. Their work was, of course, influenced by Aboriginal art.

And just as Emily has been compared to the New York school of Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, whose work was influenced by Navajo sand paintings, Minnie’s art will no doubt be compared to these Australian abstract painters. Compare, for example, Tony Tuckson’s work White Lines (horizontal on red) reproduced in the Alhalkere catalogue, and now hanging in the Indigenous art gallery at the National Gallery of Victoria, to one of Minnie Pwerle’s reductionist line work paintings.

Although Emily had never seen the work of the Abstract Expressionists, and Minnie had never seen the work of Tony Tuckson, it should be noted how much of the greatest contemporary art is working in a cyclical way, from Indigenous to non-Indigenous artists, back and round again. This is the greatest expression of reconciliation. It can only be a result of the collective unconscious. These designs are universal and non-Indigenous people have lost them. It is only our artists who can tap into the primordial in order to regain them.

The paintings of Minnie Pwerle ‘have a quality all of their own.’[vii] One thing that differentiates her immediately from Emily is that she has never painted a dot in her life, while Emily was famous for her large dotted canvases. In fact, half of the paintings in Emily’s retrospective involved dots, whether they are in the foreground or background. Minnie’s works are comprised purely of line and colour. Her palette, too, differs from Emily’s.  Most of Emily’s works were comprised of soft yellows, pinks and oranges, with others with green, maroon and violets. Minnie’s is in some ways a stronger palette of reds, ultramarine and indigo blues, bright oranges, bright yellow, and lots of white on black. She is less inclined to blend the paint than Emily was, less inclined to diffuse it with light and more inclined to work with a starker, bolder palette.

Yet the similarity between these artists lies in the sense of energy in their paintings – a bold, powerful force which ‘gives these canvases a noticeable spontaneity and vibrancy.[viiii]  Also their highly sophisticated level of abstraction, their love of land and their ‘lack of concern for precision,’ as Margo Neale has noted,[ix] is comparable. Noting Emily’s painting methods, Neale state that she ‘would almost attack the canvas – robustly, assertively. Her dots and lines weave in and under, stop and start, and appear to follow no rules. They are radical and aberrant works and the more I see of them the more I feel both emotionally and physically affected.’[x]

The same could be said for Minnie. Her works have a physical, emotional, and even spiritual impact on the viewer that takes your breath away. Unlike much of Emily’s work, which was imbued with a kind of quiet, impressionistic sense of calm, Minnie’s work seems to be coming straight out  of the women’s ceremonies, with little regard for white convention. One can almost see the women dancing in a line, celebrating the secret-sacred aspects of life, the special ‘women’s business’, the fertility rites, the rites of passage from mother to daughter to granddaughter, which have been carried out for so long. The celebration of the spirit that lives in the land, the people, the animals, and most importantly, the plants, which bring survival in the form of food and medicine when times are tough is evident.

All of these aspects exist in Minnie’s work, and yet it seems so fresh, so modern, that one can only be amazed at the talent of this octogenarian painter.

[i] Susan McCulloch-Uehlin, ‘Minnie Pwerle: Bush Melon Stories’, Australian Art Collector, Issue 22, October-December 2002.
[ii] Although I believe this is true, I wish to point out that Kngwarreye was a highly individual artist, who was as famous for the uniqueness of her art in a world too often dominated by ‘sameness’, as she was for her art’s modern abstract qualities, or for her elderliness.
[iii] Emily’s most definitive statement about her subject matter has been over-quoted, in the absence of other definitions: ‘Whole lot, that’s a whole lot. Awelye, Arltyeye (pencil yam), Ankerrthe (mountain devil lizard), Ntange (grass seed), Tingu (a Dreamtime pup), Ankerre (emu), Intekwe (a favourite food of emus, a small plant) Atnwerle (green bean) and Kame (yam seed). That’s what I paint: whole lot…’ (from the Alhalkere catalogue, ed. by Margo Neale, Queensland Art Gallery, 1998.

[iv] ‘Alhalkere was her only subject…by articulating this list, Kngwarreye gives names to component parts. She does not allude to the complex inter-relationships between the elements. ‘Whole lot’ means what it says, her paintings are about the whole, the body of knowledge rather than its unique parts.’ Christopher Hodges, Alhalkere, p.33.

[v] Australian literary critics have talked about the ‘Aboriginalisation’ of contemporary Australian society, wherein the younger non-indigenous generations are learning about Aboriginal culture, while their parents and grandparents never did, imbuing them with a respect for and appreciation of this culture and the land on which they now live (see David Tacey’s book, The Edge of the Sacred). This produces a new way of seeing, in much the same way that the study of Aboriginal art can bring about a new way of seeing art in general.
[vi] Eric Whitley, quote in Margo Neale, Alhalkere, p.29.

[vii] Susan McCulloch-Uehlin, Australian Art Collector, issue 22.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Margo Neale, quoted in S. McCulloch, The Australian Magazine, 14 February 1998.

[x] Ibid.

Antiques & Art, 2002
Since the achievements in painting made by the famous late Utopian artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye during the 1990s, Central Desert art has continued to feature prominently on the Australian art scene. Whether it is in exhibitions, in galleries, in collections or auctions, art from Utopia has become an important and permanent part of contemporary Aboriginal art. Unlike its counterpart, Western Desert art, Utopian art has, since its inception, featured women artists predominantly. Although there are several historical reasons for this (women art co-ordinators, the Women’s Centre at Utopia being the focus for the production of the art etc.), it is the women of Utopia themselves who have made this art movement into what it is today. Artists such as Kngwarreye were noted not just for their incredible painting ability, but also for their powerful personalities; personalities which were as present in the boldness of their brushstrokes and the vibrancy of their colours as they were when one was in conversation with them.

For those who aren’t yet aware of this great Australian artist, take note: Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an art phenomenon; a tribal Aboriginal woman in her eighties who painted works which were consistently compared to (with great reason) many of the greats of modern art: Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock and even Monet were some comparisons. She shook modern Australian art to its very foundations, and, as has often been noted, she put Utopia on the map. Since her death, other Utopian artists have continued to surprise us with their work: artists such as Gloria Petyarre, Ada Bird Petyarre, Kathleen Petyarre, Gloria Ngale, Anna Petyarre, Abie Loy, Angelina Pwerle, Lily Sandover Kngwarreye and Nancy Petyarre have become increasingly well-respected and collectible artists. Their works are regularly seen in exhibition. They are given favourable reviews, are featured in the media and included in lists of Australia’s most collectable artists.

Two of the most prolific and interesting artists to have come out of Utopia are Barbara Weir and her mother, Minnie Pwerle. The daughter of Minnie (an Anmatyerre/Alyawarre woman) and a white man, Barbara Weir was taken from Utopia Station as a child by the Native Welfare Patrol. She spent many years living in various parts of Australia, and did not rediscover her family and country until many years later, in the late 1960s. She spent time living at Papunya, where she worked with many of the men who nowadays are considered to be the founders of the desert art painting movement. On her return to Utopia, she spent years re-familiarising herself with Minnie and her Aunt Emily, caring for her while she painted.

Weir began painting in the early 1990s, and her paintings are derived from her mother’s and maternal grandfather’s country. Weir’s grandfather was an important figure in her early life. She says that he taught her a dreaming song, which she remembered the whole time that she was separated from her family and her land. The visual narrative of this song is depicted in many of her paintings, particularly in her series My Mother’s Country. In these works the songlines of the ancestors, their camps, waterholes, secret and sacred places are all depicted, as well as the spirits of the land, the water that runs through Utopia and the bush foods, animals, plants, grasses, flowers and berries which grew so abundantly before the white man came.

Whilst Weir has been painting for some time, her mother Minnie Pwerle only came to painting more recently. When she first put brush to canvas in 1999, her family and their colleagues were amazed. Utopia, it seemed, had done it again. This independent Aboriginal community has once more produced an artist, totally ‘untaught’ (in Western terms) who could paint incredible work. Here was an older woman who could not only paint, but who was, for lack of a better term, a genius.

Although Pwerle is Kngwarreye’s tribal sister, and there is some similarity in their depiction of Awelye (women’s ceremonial body paint designs), her work is different. She has lived as a tribal woman for her entire life, and grew up collecting bush tucker, and, although she is in her eighties, can still hunt a mean lizard. She must have experienced some changing and challenging times – the introduction of western culture into her own, the invasion of rabbits and other pests onto her land, the loss of her child. Yet in spite of all this, she remains a strong, yet shy, woman whose strength of personality belies her diminutive size.

Her personality is evident in her paintings. As the beauty of Weir’s art is often the result of careful, meticulous layering of fine dots and symbols (such as in the My Mother’s Country series) or in the shimmering, impressionist quality of her Grass Seed Dreaming series, Pwerle’s work is most notable for its bold vivacious expressionism. Confident brushstrokes, beautiful, bright colours and creative patterning with gestural line are all distinctive aspects of this octogenerian painter.

And now a third generation has risen amongst this family of artists. Weir’s eldest daughter, Teresa Pwerle, who has lived in Utopia, Alice Springs, Broome and Adelaide, is also a painter. In her new series of works, we see the beginnings of a new chapter in Aboriginal art. Like the new generation of women from Lockhart River in Queensland, Pwerle is able to bring designs from traditional Aboriginal law and ceremony and place them into a contemporary context. Her paintings, like her mother’s work, are finely executed and range from the subtle to the strong. She has been given permission to paint the songlines of her grandparent’s country from the elder women of Utopia. Two tracks appear along either side of the canvas, with intricate dots in the centre, dense with secret symbols hidden underneath. The tracks represent the women singing and dancing through the native grass at ceremony time, a practice that has been done since time immemorial. As a contemporary Anmatyerre/Alyawarre woman, Teresa brings her traditional culture into the modern world in a similar way to Barbara, by experimenting with the broad palette that acrylic paint can offer. She is as fearless of colour (and as skilled in its use) as her forebears are.

The element which binds these three women is not just their family connection, but also their land. All three share the same land, which means that they have responsibility for it and also dreaming designs associated with it. Minnie, Barbara and Teresa share similarities in their art, yet the three are also totally independent artists with distinctive styles.

Minnie’s paintings are those of a tribal elder and their designs, with no dot-work, come directly from the body paint designs associated with the women’s ceremony and bush melon dreaming. Barbara’s diverse styles are a combination of symbols and fine dotting, or they are mediative, like her Grass Seeds, or experimental, like her works in ochre and oils such as The Creation of My Mother’s Dreamtime. Teresa has another style again, completely her own.

As Minnie is a great-great-grandmother, soon there will be more generations of Utopian artists coming up. Who knows, we may have four or five generations of artists before too long, which would be great news for art, and even greater news for art lovers.