'Kngwarray’s linear works, in their infinitely varied striations and colourations, are elevated beyond formal renderings of repeated motifs by their gestural quality, freed from the two-dimensional plane in their visual effect.’[1]

Emily Kame Kngwarreye departed boldly from her typical style and subjects in the striped or ‘linear’ works that she created in her final years. Quite apart from the fields of overlaid dots for which she was known, Kngwarreye began in 1993 to paint bold lines on white grounds – first as works on paper, and shortly after on canvas. Stunned by Kngwarreye’s newfound economy and the minimalism in these works, James Mollison, Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, at the time, reportedly said: ‘just black lines on white paper, but why are they so good?’[2]

There are many available interpretations for Kngwarreye’s linear paintings. There is a strong resemblance to Awelye body paint designs – and there are photographs from the late-1970s and early-1980s of Kngwarreye being painted and dancing in these women’s ceremonies. Awelye lines in turn read as a form of cartography, mapping the cultural and physical landscape of sandhills and ridges across the desert plains. But the titles of other linear paintings by Kngwarreye allude more directly to amarr or ‘sorry cuts’ – ‘the small parallel scars on women’s upper arms that result from sourcing blood for healing’.[3]

Kngwarreye’s age and health are said to have influenced a more economical style in her final years, yet the vigour and confidence of the linear works affirms their place as a distinct and complete body of work in Kngwarreye’s late oeuvre.

Painted in June 1995, Stripes sits between the early, comparatively austere black and white linear paintings, and the interlocking nets of colour that Kngwarreye painted in 1995 and 1996. It relates strongly to works like Body markings I-IV, 1994, from the Janet Holmes à Court Collection, Perth, with the stripes moving apart and converging freely across the canvas, but maintaining a strong sense of direction and flow.

The National Gallery of Australia also hold a collection of works from this period of her work Untitled (awely), 1994. It was paintings from this period that were selected (posthumously) to represent Australia at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 with fellow artists Judy Watson and Yvonne Koolmatrie.

[1] Hetti Perkins and Kelli Cole, ‘lanterna magica: the art of Emily Kam Kngwarray,’ in Emily Kam Kngwarray, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2023, p. 190.
[2] Christopher Hodges, ‘Foreword,’ in Awelye 1994: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Utopia Art Sydney, 2016, exh. cat., quoted in Perkins and Cole, ‘lanterna magica,’ p. 189.
[3] Jennifer Green, ‘The life and legacy of Emily Kam Kngwarray,’ in Emily Kam Kngwarray, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2023, p. 158.

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