Kathleen Petyarre:
Skin Name: Petyarre
Language: Anmatyerre/Alyawerre
Region: Utopia
Dreaming: Womens Hunting, Emu, Dingo, Bush Seeds (Ntang), Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming
Kathleen Petyarre was born circa 1940 at Atnangker to the north west of Utopia Station, 275km north east of Alice Springs, Petyarre belongs to the Eastern Anmatyerr language group. She began making artworks in 1977, producing batiks along with a number of the other women at Utopia. In the late 1980s, Petyarre began painting with acrylic on canvas, and since then has gradually developed her signature styles, refining her technique of layering very fine dots in thin acrylic paint so they soak into the linen. This pristine, even surface is carefully prepared by the artist, resulting in works of remarkable depth and complexity.

Petyarre, along with her sisters and brothers, is owner or custodian of several Dreamings, including her central Dreaming, Arnkerrthe, the Thorny or Mountain Devil Lizard. This small, spiky lizard roams over a wide area, with its travels through Petyarre’s country depicted regularly in her works. It is country that is constantly changing, like the chameleon-like lizard, from place to place and over time. Petyarre uses different colours and shapes to depict sandhills, watercourses, rockholes, hailstorms and sandstorms. The imagery is simultaneously macro- and microcosmic. The fine dots might represent clouds of sand, sheets of hail, spinifex and flowers, or the bush seeds that scatter over the land, providing food for its inhabitants. Using the ‘aerial view’ typical of the work of the region, Petyarre’s recent paintings also have a strong sense of movement. Petyarre describes this sensation as ‘’…looking down from a little plane, looking down from the sky…like looking down on my country during the hot time, when the country changes colour- you know, like looking right down onto the top of the big sandhills. I love to make the paintings like its moving, traveling, but it’s still our body painting, still our ceremony’’.

The seductive and shimmering layers of dots also provide a series of fine screens that overlay the Dreaming portrayed by Petyarre. Dreamings can only be depicted, and often only be viewed, by their owners or custodians. The sacred meanings of Petyarre’s Dreamings remain intact, suggested as ‘’a barely tangible, shadowy palimpsest, overwritten, as it were, by the surface colours and movement’’. The careful observance of these laws by Petyarre indicates a highly disciplined artist who is eager to share her visions of her country with others without transgressing sacred codes.

Petyarre is a great leader in her community, from having been involved in the successful claim for title over the Utopia lease, to acting as a mentor to the younger woman artists, ensuring that they work to her characteristic high standards.

Furthermore, Petyarre is a great innovator. While working with Anmatyerr law, she has developed a powerful and unique visual language that has broadened the perceptions of and possibilities for Indigenous art. Her fine dotting, subtle variations of tone and colour, and sheer, soft surfaces are unlike the work of any other contemporary artist in Australia. Her paintings defy simple categoristation and operate on any number of levels. They are sumptuous and elegant abstract paintings; highly refined impressionist landscapes; deeply spiritual meditations of place; and complex and rigorous representations of the artist’s Dreaming. Petyarre’s dedication to her painting has been a sustained and constantly evolving process, resulting in a remarkably consistent and extremely powerful body of work.

‘’What do I think I’m doing when I’m painting my country?’’ she asks. ‘’I’m thinking about my family, my daughters, my brothers, my sisters and all my nieces, nephews and grandchildren’’. Petyarre was taken soon after she was born to Mosquito Bore, and isolated water soakage some 275km north-east of Alice Springs.

This is made up of a large X-Shaped cross, marking the site of a women’s initiation  ceremony, surrounded by a series of finely-dotted concentric circles, said to indicate the trail left by the lizard as it passes across the desert sands.

Kathleen Petyarre was a founding member of the famous Women’s Batik Group from the Utopia community north-east of Alice Springs. Like her Aunt, Emily Kngwarreye, Petyarre moved from batik to acrylic painting in the late 1980s and established a distinctive style that resembles mesmerising drifts of matter caught in a vortex or series of ridges. The artist has said of her art ‘’I like to make it like it’s moving, traveling, all the girls and women from the awelye and all the men moving traveling, like the Mountain Devil’’. Her art does not appear at auctions often, but when it does it attracts prices beyond estimated sale prices (a 1992 work fetching $13,800 from a estimated range of $6000-$8000). An retrospective of her work to be held at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art in May this year.


-Voted in Top 50 Most Collectable ‘Australian Art Collector Magazine’ March 2000/ 2001.

Collections:
•    National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
•    National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
•    Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
•    Museum and Art Galleries of Nothern Territory, Darwin
•    South Australian Museum, Adelaide
•    Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide
•    Tandanya, Adelaide
•    Edith Cowan University, Perth
•    Robert Holmes a Court Collection, Perth
•    Barossa Valley Wine and Tourist Association
•    Artbank, Sydney
•    Morven estate Collection, Charlottesville, USA
•    Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, USA
•    Levi-Kaplan Collection, Seattle, Washington, USA
•    Museum Puri Lukisan, Ubad, Bali, Indonesia
•    Collection de Musee des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceanie, Paris, France
Exhibitions:
•    1989, Coventry Gallery, Sydney
•    1989, 1997, 1998, Tandanya, Adelaide
•    1990, 1991, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland
•    1990, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland
•    1990, Harvard University, Boston, USA
•    1990, 1999, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
•    1992, Robert Holmes a Court Collection, Sydney
•    1993, Moree Plains Art Gallery, Moree
•    1994, Australian Embassy, Paris, France
•    1994, 1997, Songlines Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
•    1995, Ludwig Forum fur international Kunst, Aachen, Germany
•    1996, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
•    1996, Old Parliament House, Canberra
•    1996, 1998, 2000, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
•    1996, 1998, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
•    1996, 1998, Gallerie Australis, Adelaide
•    1997, 1999, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Surfers Paradise
•    1997, Museum Puri Lukisan, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
•    1997, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta
•    1997, 1998, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
•    1997, "Dreampower", Adelaide
•    Mary Place Gallery, Sydney
•    1997, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Sydney
•    1998, Chapman Gallery, Canberra
•    1998, Victoria Beach, Viriginia, USA
•    1998, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
•    1998, Japingka Gallery, Perth
•    1999, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
•    2002, Aboriginal Galleries of Australia, Melbourne
•    2002, Gallerie Commines, Paris, France
Awards:
•    1996, 3rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Commission Art Award (joint second prize), Canberra
•    1996, Winner, 13th Telstra NATSIAA, Darwin
•    1997, Overall Winner of the Visy Board Art Prize, Barossa Vintage Festival Art Show
•    1998, Seppelts Contemporary Art Award, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW
•    1998, Finalist, 15th NATSIAA