Heading towards Eastern Arrernte in the Northern Territory, cool early morning light bounces off the silvery naked trunks of gum trees shedding bark as summer approaches. Craggy rocks and ant hills like sculptures, spindly bushes, endless blue sky and red earth. Such are the first impressions of a visitor to the Sandover region of Central Australia, a three-hour drive north-east of Mparntwe/Alice Springs.
But through the eyes of the late artist Emily Kam Kngwarray, an Anmatyerr woman who lived here her whole life before her passing in 1996, the view of this desert landscape would have been far richer – shaped by a deep connection to place and a knowing of stories, seasons, flora and fauna, all of which was woven into her heart and art.
Kngwarray was born in about 1914 in Alhalker Country, and though she had worked with ceremonial awelye (body
