Latest news with #EmilyKamKngwarray
SBS Australia
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
'Watershed moment': Kngwarray at the Tate Modern marks first major solo exhibition of the artist in Europe
Emily Kam Kngwarray came to art late in her life. Born in 1914, an Anmatyerr woman from Alhalker Country, she started producing her first batiks in the 1980's. Now, hanging in London's Tate Modern Gallery, 83 pieces spanning her 19 year career are on display. Warumungu and Luritja woman and lead curator, Kelli Cole, says the works are an extension of culture. "What you actually see in her work, batik and painting, is actually her culture, that is displayed or depicted onto those paintings. So everything that was important to Kngwarray is a part of her cultural connection to that country, is about her responsibilities to country. It is all about that body paint, that gestural mark that you actually paint when you're doing ceremony. So when you're looking at Kngwarray's paintings, they are just this total connection to who she is as an Anmatyerr woman." Five years in the making, the exhibition is the first major solo exhibition for an Indigenous Australian artist at the Tate. Described as one of Australia's preeminent artists, Emily Kam Kngwarray is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. Her works include paintings, textiles, and works on paper, and draw their inspiration from a deep connection to Country and cultural traditions. Having travelled to Kngwarray's community upwards of twelve times over the years, Kelli Cole says working with community was central to the curatorial process. "So when I talk about her cultural responsibilities, Kngwarray was a senior elder of her community, so she actually had to partake in ceremony. And so what that meant was they would go on country, they would paint themselves up, they would sing a song. That song had a specific song for each ceremony that she did. And with her gestural marks within her batiks and her paintings actually come from that extraordinary knowledge that she had. So prior to painting, she had been doing that for such a long time." The exhibition includes 83 pieces, some of which have never been shown in public before and have come from private collections from across Europe and America. While Emily Kam Kngwarray is well known in the Australian art world, her works are less recognised in Europe. Kelli Cole says by being on display somewhere like the Tate Modern, the works will gain even wider acclaim. "Look, her impact in Australia is huge. Kngwarray's had several solo exhibitions in Australia and in Japan. So she's a name that is very well known in Australia as a major, major artist. By bringing her works here to the Tate Modern, we are hoping that her name is going to be synonymous with the European sort of vocabulary. It's gonna be Emily Kam Kngwarray, Jackson Pollock, all of these Picassos. We're really hoping that we can actually put her on the world scale or the world stage and people will start knowing her works." The exhibition opened last week and runs until January 11th 2026 at the Tate Modern gallery in London. Considered part of a wider shift to showcase artists previously left out of the spotlight, Art critic Tabish Khan says it is a historic moment for the gallery. "It definitely feels like a watershed moment for Tate Modern to have such a sizable exhibition of an Aboriginal artist. And we're definitely seeing more museums showcasing Indigenous and First Nations artists. And I think it's a reflection of a few things. Number one, that we've neglected these artists and not really shown them, focusing more on Western art history. And two, a recognition that these are cultures that are very much in tune with nature. And part of the problem with the world is the fact that we haven't been in tune with nature. And now we're realising that mistake a bit too late. And these are artists who knew about this from the get-go and we should appreciate what they're telling us in their art."
ABC News
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Is there any appetite for risk at Creative Australia? And the story behind the art of Emily Kam Kngwarray
Khaled Sabsabi is once again Australia's representative to the 2026 Venice Biennale, after the Board of Creative Australia reversed their previous decision to rescind his invitation. Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, the former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, says that Instead of shying away from controversy, a strong agency would embrace it and work to engage the public. But after an independent review that spoke a lot about risk management, what will happen to Creative Australia's appetite for risk? And Emily Kam Kngwarray is one of Australia's most renown artists and one of the most expensive. This week, a major collection of Kngwarray's art opens at the Tate Modern in London. Featuring more than 70 pieces, it's the first exhibition of this scale of her work in Europe. Danielle MacLean, director of Emily: I am Kam, explores the life, the Country, and the politics behind the art. Our track of the week is Something About A Cake Shop by Stiff Gins. Stories mentioned in the headlines: Sean Combs, aka Diddy, found guilty on two charges, but acquitted on three others Gareth Sansom wins the Sorrento Art Prize Museum of West African Art announces first public exhibition Actor Julian McMahon dies at 56 Actor Michael Madsen dies at 67
9 News
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- 9 News
Renowned Indigenous artist's works on display at esteemed London gallery
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here A major solo exhibition of works by renowned Aboriginal Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray has opened at one of London's most esteemed galleries, the Tate Modern. The exhibition, the first of its kind in Europe, is showcasing more than 70 of Kngwarray's paintings and batiks almost three decades after her death. "We've collaborated with the community of the Sandover region, so Emily Kam Kngwarray's family members, a lot of work has got into it, selecting these beautiful paintings," lead curator Kelli Cole said. The exhibition has been five years in the making, and Tate Modern is anticipating more than 200,000 visitors during its six-month run. (Nine) "She's had quite a few solo exhibitions in Australia, and then also in Japan, but this is the first European exhibition." Many of the pieces in the exhibition were transported to the UK all the way from Australia. "Sometimes the logistics complexity dazzles me - but they all arrived safely and carefully to be presented to the UK public which is a joy," Tate Modern director Maria Balshaw said. The exhibition has been five years in the making, and Tate Modern is anticipating more than 200,000 visitors during its six-month run. (Nine) "We want to broaden people's understanding of art, we also want to be presenting to them work that we think is genuinely extraordinary," she added. The exhibition has been five years in the making, and Tate Modern is anticipating more than 200,000 visitors during its six-month run. "I'm an Aboriginal woman from central Australia," Cole said. "For us right now, having the Kngwarray exhibition shows that we are strong, we are a living culture and that we are very proud people." This article was produced with the assistance of 9ExPress . CONTACT US
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Is the truth about this ‘Outback genius' more complex than the Tate makes out?
According to Maria Balshaw, director of the Tate, this retrospective for the Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Kngwarray is 'the most important exhibition Tate has done for a long time'. After a disappointingly samey start, it delivers on the hype, with a thrilling finale. Perhaps Balshaw was galvanised by a research trip to, as she puts it, 'the red desert lands of Alhalker', in Australia's Northern Territory, where Kngwarray – who, according to the curators, extended 'a continuing cultural tradition much more ancient than any to have sprung from European soil' – was born in 1914. Certainly, the show exemplifies a recent turn towards indigenous art; this, rather than, say, yet another exhibition devoted to Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso, is what gets Tate's curators going these days. Given the 'bush' (or personal) name Kam, after the Aboriginal word for the seeds and seedpods of the 'pencil yam' (which later inspired a motif commonly found in her canvases), Kngwarray – whose early years predated the 'whitefeller' domination of Central Australia – only took up painting in 1988, towards the end of her life, having spent 11 years working in batik while participating in art-and-craft workshops. After a couple of introductory rooms, the exhibition gives the impression that, like Athena springing from the head of Zeus, she emerged as an artist fully formed. Twenty-five surprisingly homogenous early paintings appear in a vast, open gallery, along with eight batiks (some of which seem to seethe with insect-like life). These acrylic pictures are mostly abstracted fields of dots, like blooms of lichen, or microbes multiplying on a microscope slide, but representing native seeds. Sometimes accompanied by interconnecting lines, they are superimposed on dun, reddish backgrounds redolent of the brick-coloured soil of Kngwarray's homeland. Occasionally, schematic motifs, also associated with Alhalker Country, are perceptible: the distinctive shapes of local flora, an emu's three-toed footprints, the child-like silhouettes of geckos or blue-tongued lizards; often, there's a sense of something stirring and fluttering in scrubby undergrowth. In effect, they're not unlike those colour-blindness tests in which numbers are hidden among dots of contrasting hues.
The Age
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Britain celebrates Emily, after hidden letter reveals it turned down Indigenous art
One of Australia's most celebrated artists, Emily Kam Kngwarray, will be taken to the world this week in a major exhibition in London – as a long-hidden letter reveals how Britain once dismissed the idea of showing her work. London's tube stations have been adorned with Kngwarray's vivid paintings of ancestral stories to promote the major event at the Tate Modern, the first solo exhibition in Europe to show her work. The exhibition, organised with the National Gallery of Australia, will run for six months and is expected to draw thousands of visitors to see more than 70 works including early batiks and her final paintings. But a letter sitting in a London gallery reveals the Tate turned down an offer to show Australian Indigenous art when Kngwarray was taking the art world by storm. When London gallery owner Rebecca Hossack asked the Tate to consider adding Indigenous works to its collection in August 1996, the institution replied that it was adding contemporary works but would not consider Indigenous artists. 'You may have noticed that we acquired a landscape by Fred Williams last year,' Tate director Nicholas Serota replied, referring to the famous Australian painter. 'I do not think that it would be appropriate for us to move further and to take on an interest in Australian Aboriginal art, any more than we can do the same for equivalent work being undertaken in Africa or Latin America.' Kngwarray, born on Anmatyerr country north of Alice Springs in around 1910, stunned the art world with her batiks and canvases after she began painting in her 70s. Her work now fetches millions of dollars at auction.
