Emily Kame Kngwarreye's First International Retrospective Opens at Tokyo's National Art Center

From May 28 to July 28, 2008, the National Art Center in Tokyo presented the first retrospective of Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye outside Australia. The exhibition featured approximately 3,000 paintings created over eight years after she began painting with acrylic polymer on canvas at age 78. Her ancestral homeland, Alhalkere or 'Utopia' in Australia's Northern Territory, served as her primary subject. Works like the 22-painting 'Alhalkere Suite' were described as aerial maps depicting desert flora. The monumental 'Big Yam' (1996) stood about twenty feet high with snaky brushstrokes in ochre, plum, and Venetian red. 'Earth's Creation' spanned roughly 9 by 22 feet across four panels, using lush greens and yellows to evoke the landscape. Kngwarreye's process included painting on dark red or brown grounds reminiscent of body painting traditions, with later linear works featuring stacked stripes. Fellow townspeople contributed mineral deposits with red clay to illustrate the paintings' connection to the land. The artist's tactile experience of walking barefoot across Alhalkere informed her work, communicating the feel of the desert.