Date: Thursday, 16 November 2023
Author: Oliver Zhu
Aboriginal Research: Emily Kame Kngwarreye
Who is Emily Kame Kngwarreye?
She is an Aboriginal artist and one of the most important indigenous contemporary artists originating in Australia. She started to paint in her late 70’s but produced over 3,000 artworks in the 8 years of her career, which is around one per day. Because of how far she lived from the rest of major cities, she could only contact people in her community and wasn’t until 80 that she was finally recognised as a national artist. Therefore her works weren’t known until very late in her life.
Where did she get her inspiration from?
Emily was inspired by the land in which she lived on, Alhalkere. Her views in living on this land fused with the beliefs and cultures she was told interpreted her way of Alhalkere into an art form and all of these artworks are now known to be her cultural legacy. When mixing culture and land in one scene, it creates art that tells about the land and how our descendants used to thrive and practice on techniques that were not disturbed for thousands of years.
This badge is to pledge to all of her hard work and hardships for the Aboriginal people for art.
How is this relevant to our website?
Before learning about the arts, she had to help the male artists and couldn’t explore artistic styles for her own works. She was the first to learn about a certain type of art, batik, in her community and changed the role of Aboriginal women in the history of art. After, she shifted to canvas painting as batik drying was a slow and tedious process. This was the time where she started to grow in publicity.
How she has now shaped how we view Aboriginal art by providing us with history and the values to us that nothing is impossible and you can separate from the group to form your own goals. This is our desire to highlight ourselves. We are working for a highly detailed, unique and talented work by all of our teammates to be presented to the judges and to visit Houston!
You can steer away from whatever other people are saying and create your own art in the form of ideas.
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