Emily

Before it got too hot this morning we walked across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern to see the exhibition of Emily Kam Kngwarray (1910-1996) that opened yesterday. Anyone who is interested in Australian First Nation art knows her as "Emily", one of their earliest and greatest artists.

It was a stunning display of her work and fascinating background information about her and her people who have lived for 40,000+ years in the area of central Australia that was named by white settlers in the 1920s as "Utopia".   Emily saw her first white man when she was about 10 years old and for many years worked doing menial tasks on a cattle ranch.  In her late 60s she was introduced to batik-making in a government-funded education programme.  About 10 years later painting with acrylics was introduced.  Emily painted about 3000 works in the 8 years before she died and travelled out of Utopia for the first time for solo exhibitions of her work all round Australia.  The year after she died she was represented by Australia at the Venice Biennale.

She started making batiks (top left) then painted "dot" paintings in acrylic (my favourite which is about 4m tall, top right), the lady herself painting (bottom right), and lots of tempting artefacts made recently in Utopia in the exhibition shop (bottom  left).