Abie Loy Kemarre | 'Awelye, 2023' | 76x92cm

Code: ALKG0105

Artist: Abie Loy Kemarre

Title: Awelye

Area: Utopia, NT

Community: Anmatyerre / Alyawerre

Medium: Acrylic On Canvas

Size: 76x92cm

Year: 2023

Awelye is the Anmatyerre and Alyawerre word for women's ceremony, and for the body paint designs applied across the upper arms, breasts and torso when that ceremony takes place. The sweeping curves and repeated bands trace the same gestures used to paint the body, marks that affirm a woman's connection to her country, her family line and the knowledge she carries of bush foods and law. Abie Loy Kemarre grew up watching and taking part in these ceremonies, and her canvases carry that same rhythm of application, line after line, built up by hand.

Here the ground is worked in a deep charcoal-grey, laid out as a dense grid of irregular rectangles and squares, no two quite the same size or shape. Each cell is framed in a ring of colour - blue, green, and soft purple-grey - painted freehand so the lines bow and waver rather than run straight, giving the whole surface a sense of gentle movement, as if seen through water.

Kemarre outlines many of these dark cells with a fine border of white dots, laid in tight unbroken rows that trace the inner edge of each coloured frame. Other cells are left plain, their colour band solid and unbroken, so the dotted and undotted shapes alternate across the canvas in no fixed order. The dark centres sit heavy and flat against the surrounding light, giving the grid real depth and weight.

From across a room the canvas reads as a single shifting field, teal and blue-grey knitting together into a quiet, breathing pattern. Move closer and it breaks apart into hundreds of individual cells, each one hand-drawn, each dotted border laid dot by dot with the same patience and repetition that marks the ceremony this series draws its name from.

Abie Loy Kemarre works from the Utopia region and is the granddaughter of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, one of Australia's most celebrated Aboriginal artists. She continues that lineage with her own refined, contemporary approach, known especially for her intricate bush medicine leaf paintings that shimmer with light and movement. Her work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in major public and private collections.

Abie Loy Kemarre is the granddaughter of the legendary Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Australia's most famous Aboriginal artist. From the Utopia region, Abie creates refined, contemporary bush medicine leaf paintings with intricate patterns that shimmer with light and movement. She carries forward one of the most important artistic lineages in Aboriginal art.