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Emily Kngwarreye and Barbara Weir

20 June 2003 - Utopia has produced some heavenly artworks. Victoria Hynes profiles some of its stars.

The desert community of Utopia has become closely associated with some spectacular indigenous women artists. This former cattle station north-east of Alice Springs was placed squarely on the art map by the phenomenal success of the late Emily Kngwarreye, the traditional elder who in the 1980s became the first "superstar" of contemporary Aboriginal painting.

Marrickville Council is hosting two exhibitions of women's art from Utopia. Chrissie Cotter Gallery features the seven Petyarre sisters, while Westside Gallery has the paintings of Kngwarreye and her niece, Barbara Weir.

Eight of Kngwarreye's paintings are on display at Westside and focus on the theme of wildflowers. Meanwhile, the lesser-known Weir has produced a powerful body of work. Viewing her paintings is an uplifting experience.

The artist lives and works in Alice Springs, but more people in Europe and Japan are familiar with her work than in her own country.

Painting with natural earth ochres, her strong linear patterns represent women's body paint designs - stripes applied to breasts, arms and legs for traditional ceremonies known as Awelye.

Weir's canvases are dramatic and compelling. She throws the paint on with her hands, walks or crawls over the canvas, and mixes in spinifex with her terracotta pigments.

In her Grass Seed Dreamings series, she fills the picture plane with finely painted reeds of grass that appear to be rhythmically moving as if blown about by a warm breeze. These seeds and grasses, as well as berries, yams and flowers, are integral to the women's ceremonies.

In yet another stylistic convention, she employs an intricate dot technique with acrylic paints to create amorphic shapes that appear like a vast cosmos.

She describes this series simply as the stories of her mother's country, their symbolism deliberately kept ambiguous.

Weir's own story is as remarkable as her artwork. Born in 1945, the daughter of well-known Utopia painter Minnie Pwerle and an Irish station owner became part of the stolen generation, taken by welfare from her family at the age of nine while collecting water at Utopia Station.

It was not until the late '60s that she found her way back to Utopia with six children in tow. She went on to become the first woman to head the Utopia Land Council and travelled to Indonesia with other Utopia women to learn the craft of batik.

Following Kngwarreye's death in 1996, she began experimenting with her own painting style and began travelling to Europe and Asia with her exhibitions, soon attracting the attention of collectors such as Barry Humphries, Andre Agassi and Michael Jackson.

"No one was taught painting, but these are the stories that were taught to us," says Weir. "Everything I do, I call my mother's country; the stories that belong to my people.

"You have to learn your own law from your own family. When I was a kid, we didn't have any written language, so we had to remember everything. We were taught things on the sand; now we can put them onto canvas."

Make sure you also stop by at Chrissie Cotter Gallery to look at the work of the Petyarre sisters in Seven Sisters.

Highlights include Kathleen's beautiful paintings, composed of swirling clusters of tiny dots that evoke the changing seasons, and Gloria's energetic compositions that feature spiralling patterns representing the journey of her ancestral totem, the Arnkerrth or Mountain Devil Lizard.

Where Westside Gallery, 142 Addison Road, Marrickville
When Daily 11am-5pm, until 29 June 2003
Seven Sisters is at Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Pidcock Street, Camperdown, Wednesday-Sunday 11am-5pm, until June 29.

Source:The Sydney Morning Herald

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