This work was created by Emily Kame Kngwarreye in 1995 when she was 85 years old. Titled Big Yam Dreaming (done on canvas with synthetic polymer paint) Kngwarreye finished this painting in two days, the same amount of time it took her assistants to paint the canvas with black primer. The work, done in Delmore Downs, Northern Territory, was not sketched, rescaled, or retouched by the artist. It currently resides in the Collection National Gallery of Australia. The painting is massive, three by eight meters, and is rolled onto a large custom made spool and travels in a crate specially designed to contain it. Each time it is stretched out and put up in an installation it requires about 12 people to complete the task.
I very much like the black and white used here, it reminds me of seeing a spiderweb in the early morning during summer still covered in dew and almost glowing in the predawn light. The lines are seemingly random and stitched together to by nothing but chance and the artists whim, but it flows for me none the less. To have completed a work like this with no pre planning and have it still flow together and work as a composition really impresses me, I imagine that planning it would have created something far less beautiful and organic.
Kngwarreye didn’t start painting prolifically until she was in her late seventies and it is estimated that she created almost 3000 paintings during her eight year span as a painter. Emily Kame Kngwarreye was born in 1910 the Utopia Community in the Northern Territory in Australia, about 230 km north east of Alice Springs. She spent the majority of her life working in her home creating Batik – a cloth dying process in which the parts of the cloth which are meant not to be dyed are covered in wax. Acrylic painting was introduced to her village by Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association and Kngwarreye’s paintings received early acclaim for their design. After the introduction of acrylic medium, Kngwarreye started creating at a massive rate, at 3000 paintings in 8 years, almost 1 painting a day.
Below is a photo of the artist, titled Emily all dressed up.
There is a pretty neat video of the artist painting Big Yam Dreams and some footage of it being put up at a Tokyo art show.
further information on the painting and artist can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Kngwarreye
http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/utopia_the_genius_of_emily_kame_kngwarreye/emily_kame_kngwarreye/
http://nma.gov.au/exhibitions/utopia_the_genius_of_emily_kame_kngwarreye/behind_the_scenes/
April 23, 2010 at 2:37 pm |
While I love the piece of art, I think I love the picture of the artist even more! The background information is interesting too, I bet she had to work for two days STRAIGHT to finish the piece. It’s also interesting that she was 85 years old when she created this. Great, accurate, information!