Bush Medicine Leaves

Gloria Petyarre... more

by Gloria Petyarre

Title

Bush Medicine Leaves

Artist

Gloria Petyarre

Medium

Painting - Acrylic On Canvas

Description

Gloria Petyarre

Born c. 1945 at Atnangkere Soakage, Northern Territory. In the early 1980s, Gloria made her first painting on canvas and soon developed her unique style of depicting the stories and her understanding of the traditional country.

Gloria continues to develop her paintings to higher levels of abstraction, continually experimenting with line and colour. She uses close tonal values of different colours, creating a dynamic optical intensity.

Winner of Australia�s most prestigious landscape art award, the �Wynne Painting Prize in 1999�.
� Featured many times in the most important Aboriginal art prize in the country, the �Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Straight Art Award� in Darwin.
� Represented in all major public collections and many corporate collections throughout Australia.

� Her signature work, 'Bush Medicine Leaves' remains the most popular in the market. Indeed an example 'Bush Medicine 2004' has already achieved over $78,000 in the secondary market.
Selected Exhibitions:

1988-2002 Utopia Art Sydney; 1992 National Gallery of Australia; 2000 AMP Building; 1999 Embassy of Australia; 1996-1999 Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne; 1998 ART EXPO New York, 2002 Singapore Art Museum; 2001 Manawatu Gallery, New Zealand; 2001 Kunst der Gegenwart, Austria; 1999 Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; 1992-2002 Gallery Rai, Tokyo; 2002 Knut Grothe Galeri, Denmark; 1998 exhibited extensively in Europe including: Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands.

Detail:

Born: c 1938
Region: Central Desert
Community Centre: Utopia
Outstation: Atnangkere
Language: Anmatyerre
Subjects and Themes: mountain devil lizard, body design, medicine leaves
Born c. 1938 at Atnangkere Soakage, Northern Territory. In the 1970s, Gloria was a founding member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group. With wonderful confidence, she merged the traditional iconography of the Anmmatyerre onto the new medium of silk. A very innovative and dynamic artist, she exerted a great influence on others in the group. In the early 1980s, Gloria made her first painting on canvas (for CAAMA's Summer Project exhibition) and soon developed her unique style of depicting the stories and her understanding of the traditional country. In 1995/96, she received a Full Fellowship Grant from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Board of The Australia Council.

Her work features powerful structural linear patterns derived from body painting, outlined with single dots. She says she prefers the greater freedom and control she finds with the medium of acrylic on canvas. several of her works now have no dots at all, but bands of different color whose optical effects have evoked comparison to the British artist Bridget Riley.

Her main Dreamings that she paints are the Mountain Devil Lizard, Bean, Emu, Pencil Yam, Grass Seed and Small Brown Grass and well as the traditional body paint designs worn by women.

Awards

1993, Design for tapestry for Victorian Tapestry Workshop.;
1993, Mural for Kansas City Zoo;
1999, Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Collections

Allen, Allen & Hemsley;
Art Gallery of New South Wales;
Australian National Gallery;
Baker-McKenzie;
Campbelltown City Art Gallery;
Flinders University, South Australia;
Gold Coast City Art Gallery;
Griffith University Collection;
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery;
Museum of Victoria, Melbourne;
National Gallery of Victoria;
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney;
Queensland Art Gallery;
Queensland University of Technology;
Riddoch Art Gallery, S.A.;
Supreme Court, Brisbane;
The Robert Holmes a Court Collection;
University of New South Wales;
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, U.S.A.;
Westpac, New York;
James D. Wolfensohn Collection;
Woollongong City Art Gallery;
Woollongong University Collection;
Macquarie Bank;
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland;
Singapore Art Museum;
Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory;
British Museum.

Uploaded

March 21st, 2010