Ada Bird Petyarre
Ada Bird Petyarre
Green Awely #1, 1998
Ada Bird Petyarre, Anmatyerre people, (c. 1930-2009)
screenprint ed. 7/50
42 x 60 cm (frame: 73 x 87 cm)
numbered, titled and signed below image
Other notes: another impression of this print is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Accession Number: 2000.484.
$450 (framed)
enquire:
simon@ensemblefineart.com.au
0419 540 162
The practice of awely is a collective form of matrilineal kinship and sharing of knowledge of the land, customs, and Ancestral Creation (Dreamtime) stories. Teachings are expressed in different modalities such as song, rhythm, melody, gestures and dance, gathering, graphic imagery, totem objects, and spatial orientation. Within awely, there are many differentiated roles and relationships which form a complex whole.
Awely is important to kin bonding, education of country and the passing on of tradition, which is done through gradual participation and teaching of the young.
Ada Bird Petyarre was an Anmatyerre woman from the Northern Territory. She was born on the pastoral lease Utopia, located in the Sandover region north-east of Alice Springs, and did domestic work on the station as a young woman. As was so for her kinswoman, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Petyarre’s art practice commenced in the late 1970s when the Utopia women were introduced to batik and other dying and textile painting techniques. She was one of the founding members of the Utopia Batik Group, whose work became an important industry for the Anmatyerre following the return of Utopia to its traditional owners in 1978. Their batiks were the subject of the book Utopia: A Picture Story, published in 1990. Petyarre made her first painting on canvas in 1988 and held the first of her several solo exhibitions at Utopia Art, Sydney, in 1990. Subsequently, her paintings were included in major group shows in Australia and overseas. and were acquired for the collections of public institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW. and the Art Gallery of SA.