Emily Kame Kngwarreye

A new series of monographs on Australian female artists, selected with series editor Natalie King, curator and Enterprise Professor at the Victorian College of the Arts. These books are compact yet perfectly formed. They comprise 96 pages of the artist's favourite works - designed for optimum visual impact and to reach anyone who is inspired by art and beauty.The extra frisson for these titles comes in the introduction. For each monograph, one luminary from another field will write a personal, powerful essay of 1200 words. It could be an ode to one particular painting; it could be a parallel narrative inspired by themes in the artist's work.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye was born in her Country, Alhalkere, early in the 20th century. She grew up learning about the land, its history, stories, songs, plants and animals; the practical and the spiritual. She believed her paintings contained the essence of her Country and that they could speak for themselves.Kngwarreye began her 'art' making via batik in the latter part of the 1970s and was an important member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group. In 1988 she made her first painting with acrylic on canvas, and by the time of her first solo show in 1990 she was already in many notable collections and had forged new ground for contemporary Indigenous art. In 1992 she was awarded a Federal Government Creative Fellowship, the first Indigenous artist to receive one.At the time of her death in September 1996, Kngwarreye was recognised as one of Australia's foremost artists. The following year, her work would hang at the Venice Biennale and a major touring retrospective would open at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane. In 2019, the Tate Gallery in London purchased her work, making hers the first piece of Australian Indigenous art to enter their collection.

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