Find Lots

• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Alan Boxer Collection of Australian Indigenous Art
• Sale Date:
  17 Mar 2015 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  28
• Lot Description:
  Emily Kame Kngwarreye
  (Circa 1910–1996)
  Fruit of the Vine (1990)
  synthetic polymer paint on linen
  128.5 x 230 cm
  bears Delmore Gallery cat. no. OQ89 verso
• Provenance:
  Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory; Chapman Gallery, Canberra; The Alan Boxer Collection, Canberra
• Exhibited:
  Crossing Cultures: Art From the Boxer Collection, Drill Hall, Canberra, May - June 2000, cat. no. 18
• Notes:
  This painting is sold with Delmore Gallery documentation. Painted in December 1990, the work is Kngwarreye's response to a period of drenching summer rains that made the desert, and her country of Alhalkerre blossom dramatically. Her inspiration for this painting is a fruit-bearing vine that was covered in profuse new growth soon after the rains. Characteristic of Kngwarreye's method of layering paint, the sinuous lines of red ochre that mimic the vine and the spread of the plant's root system underground set the compositional matrix for the painting. The matrix is subsumed beneath an array of orange, grey, yellow, madder lake red, yellow ochre, green and white dots applied with a vigour and assurance that reflect a celebration of the fertile nature and bounty of her country. The scale of the picture also creates a direct relationship between it and the viewer-it surrounds but does not engulf, inviting the viewer to share in a physical sense this exuberant landscape of paint. The joy of experiencing the landscape sits in counter poise to the cultural knowledge that underpins Kngwarreye's art. The notes accompanying the painting draw attention to the artist's acute awareness of each phase of the changing seasons. These are manifest in the state of the flora, the food plants and the bush tucker. Such intimate knowledge finds its expression in ceremonies, in which Kngwarreye played a leading role. Fruit of the Vine is chromatically and stylistically similar to After Rain, painted earlier in 1990, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (illustrated in Isaacs, J., T. Smith, J. Ryan et al., Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, plate 7, page 50] and the later Alalgura, 1993, in the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection (in Neale, M. et al, Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Utopia: The genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Osaka: The National Museum of Art, 2008, plate D-28). Barely more than a year after Kngwarreye commenced painting in the public arena, 1990 was a significant year for the artist. Utopia Art Sydney mounted her first solo exhibition and in the same year she exhibited at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, and Coventry Gallery, Sydney. Her work was included in a number of group exhibitions in private galleries, as well as in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' exhibition Abstraction, and in Contemporary Aboriginal Art from the Robert Holmes à Court Collection which toured to Harvard University and University of Minnesota in the United States. 1990 was also the year in which Kngwarreye made a rare journey outside of her country; she went to Perth to view the exhibition of the works she and Louie Pwerle painted the year before during the CAAMA/Utopia Artists in Residence Project at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). Wally Caruana
• Estimate:
  A$100,000 - 150,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

  Can't see the realised price? Upgrade your subscription now!

• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.