A Summer Project: A Star is Born
Early 1989, CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) Shop, Alice Springs. The redbacks had been evicted and Rodney Gooch, the manager, had the first paintings by the Utopia Women lining the walls. A Summer Project was an experiment we conceived to give every woman the chance to try painting, and it worked. Every artist had shifted seamlessly from batik to paint and there simply wasn’t a bad one, but one painting stood apart from the rest and drew everyone’s attention. With the shackles of the rigid batik process removed, Emily Kame Kngwarreye had embraced the directness and flexibility of paint and brush, and would never look back.
In 1988, Indigenous art was a highly contested zone. Some thought contemporary Indigenous art was ethnographic and thus not contemporary, while others thought it was too contemporary and not Indigenous enough. These two irreconcilable positions were often taken on the same artwork.
Kngwarreye emerged amid this debate, a respected senior woman who had lived close to her Country, Alhalkere, all her life. She had an intimate knowledge and understanding of this place, a lifetime of experience making meaningful marks, and a clearly stated view that her work was all encompassing. But Kng-warreye was an artist like no other, and with her first painting she revealed her unique visual language, and all eyes were on it.
CAAMA Shop
With a view to gaining maximum exposure for the Utopia Women, we embarked on a collaboration with Chandler Coventry. His gallery’s reputation for showing the best emerging art made it the perfect venue to launch the Utopia Women. He was in Alice Springs to preview their work. James Mollison, Director of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) was also there. We all went to view the works at CAAMA Shop together. The best work had been saved for the show and it was very well received. Mollison immediately put his bid in for a painting by Kngwarreye. Coventry quickly bagged her other one for himself. Both paintings starred at the Coventry Show in 1989, to the great disappointment of the many people who fell in love with them at the opening. We had
