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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Paul Daley

Emily Kam Kngwarray: stunning retrospective brings perspective – and agency – to an Australian great

Emily Kam Kngwarray batiks
Emily Kam Kngwarray’s early work was on batik, before transitioning to acrylic on canvas. The exhibition opens in Canberra at the National Gallery of Australia on Saturday 2 December. Photograph: National Gallery of Australia

A western story is invariably grafted on to Australia’s most prominent Indigenous visual artists – a reductive paradigm through which they can be more easily understood, interpreted and written about. And as a practitioner celebrated at the vanguard of the 1970s and 80s central desert art movement, “Emily” Kam Kngwarray (a whitefella first name, attributed to her in her teens) is perhaps the greatest example.

Emily Kam Kngwarray near Mparntwe Alice Springs after the first exhibition of her Utopia batiks in 1980
Emily Kam Kngwarray near Mparntwe Alice Springs after the first exhibition of her Utopia batiks in 1980. Photograph: Toly Sawenko
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