Part of the The Exhibitionists documentary, on Emily Kam Kngwarray, Utopia artist, Anmatyerre people (1914-1996). Footage courtesy National Gallery of Australia
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00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 You know, she was in her 70s when she started painting.
00:12 What a legacy.
00:14 (gentle music)
00:26 (gentle music)
00:29 Emily Kim Noiri's work is clearly international
00:45 and extraordinary and well-respected.
00:48 She commands great prizes.
00:50 She was an absolute genius.
00:52 She only worked for about eight years
00:55 at the latter end of her life
00:56 and to have produced the number of canvases,
00:58 oh, I think 3,000, of such extraordinary quality,
01:02 telling her story, talking about her country, Aljekeir,
01:07 but in a way that is universal,
01:09 that in a way that people can respond to around the world.
01:12 So Earth's Creation,
01:21 one of her extraordinary works, paintings,
01:24 was sold for 2.1 million a few years ago.
01:26 That work is the most expensive work ever bought
01:32 by anyone from a woman artist in this country.
01:36 That that work is absolutely contemporary
01:39 of the here and now and vitally important
01:42 as part of the story of modern art.
01:44 Look, this old lady,
01:50 she honestly didn't wanna talk nonsense,
01:53 didn't wanna talk money story,
01:54 didn't wanna talk any of that sort of stuff.
01:56 Emily just wanted to paint, to be left alone,
01:58 and that's what she loved the most.
02:00 She wanted cups of tea with a lot of sugar in it
02:02 and biscuits.
02:03 I was privileged enough to know her as a child
02:07 and grew up watching her paint.
02:09 And I think that's the most extraordinary thing
02:11 about Emily Kemaware's paintings is when you do see them,
02:15 you can feel the sense of the presence of that lady
02:18 in those paintings.
02:19 (gentle music)
02:21 Emily was born on her father's country, Alankara.
02:32 Emily was well and truly into her late 70s
02:41 when she first started painting.
02:43 So this was a woman who had no references
02:46 to modernism or expressionism.
02:49 What came out of Emily Kemaware came out of country.
02:55 Emily Kemaware can stand beside any artist in the world
02:59 and she's been compared to other great abstract painters.
03:03 But the point is, even if her work looks like,
03:06 let's say a Jackson Pollock,
03:08 the sources of it are in her country.
03:11 It's genuinely innovative work
03:15 that does not come from Western painting.
03:18 - I think Emily set the scene
03:23 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island artists
03:25 to follow her in her extraordinary footsteps.
03:29 - Australia, with its great indigenous artists,
03:32 is one of the most innovative places in the world,
03:35 in my view, in terms of what may be the material
03:40 or the subject or the approach within contemporary art.
03:43 It's a hugely open field, an exciting field.