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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Australian Indigenous & Oceanic Art
• Sale Date:
  21 Jul 2015 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  47
• Lot Description:
  Kitty Kantilla (Kutuwulumi Purawarrumpatu)
  (circa 1928-2003)
  Untitled (2000)
  natural earth pigments with synthetic binder on canvas
  92 x 85.5 cm high
• Provenance:
  Jilamara Arts & Craft, Melville Island; Aboriginal & Pacific Art, Sydney; Private Collection, Sydney
• Exhibited:
  Kitty Kantilla, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, 27 April - 19 August 2007; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Syney, 7 December 2007 - 21 January 2008
• References:
  Judith Ryan, Kitty Kantilla, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2007, p. 54 (illus.)
• Notes:
  Kantilla's 2002-2003 paintings exhibited in her last individual show and in the 2003 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award also amount to a radical departure in her practice. Composed largely of densely textured expanses of ochre suffused with black underpainting, rather than a myriad of delicate markings, loosely applied within a structure, these tough distillations forgo intricate detail and dotting. Unlike previous works in which solid ochre shapes provide points of focus upon surfaces covered with rhythmical dots and lines, the artist is working with broader linear gestures and fields of cloudy white, intense red and yellow on black or white: chords in a four-part harmony. Kantilla's poetics of intimacy taught the art world that quality is not contingent upon scale. Her means were few: she needed only dots, lines and ochre colours to create infinite variations of rhythm, balance and beauty, of which no two are exactly alike. Kantilla's works, like those of early European modernists, do not map space or tell a story but radically affirm the painted surface and thereby guarantee the autonomy of art. Yet the power and inwardness of Kantilla's innovative art hinges on its deep resonance with customary ritual. For the viewer, Kantilla's inescapably modern works are also highly charged with ceremony, with something spiritual and untouchable. Kantilla's sophisticated form of abstraction eludes explanation in terms of narrative because she strenuously pursued her art from deep within her culture. By painting, Kantilla was also singing and dancing: she sensed and invoked holistically, through a special music of natural ochre and design, the decorated objects, the painted dancers and their kinetic movement, the percussive rhythm and dynamism of ceremony. For the viewer, Kantilla's works are highly charged with ceremony, with something spiritual and untouchable. This was her Tiwiness, her identity: it drove her to make art and was her special form of activism. Painting was central to her identity as expressed to Felicity Green: "I will paint until the day I die".1 1 Judith Ryan, Kitty Kantilla, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2007
• Estimate:
  A$30,000 - 50,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

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