Barbara Weir | 'Grass Seed Dreaming, 2015' | 90x120cm

Code: RDDBW1005

Artist: Barbara Weir

Title: Grass Seed Dreaming

Area: Utopia, NT

Community: Anmatyerre / Alyawarre

Medium: Acrylic On Linen

Size: 90x120cm

Year: 2015

Barbara Weir's Grass Seed Dreaming paintings carry the memory of her mother's country at Utopia, where after rain the grasses seed and the whole land seems to move with wind. The fine seed heads bend and tangle together in drifts of colour, a pattern she watched as a child before she was taken from her family, and returned to paint decades later as a way of holding that country close. The series sits alongside her other great body of work, My Mother's Country, both built from the same restless, layered mark making that recalls grass caught in moving air.

Barbara Weir (1945-2023) was a celebrated Anmatyerre and Alyawarre artist, cultural leader and member of the Stolen Generations. She was born at Bundy River Station in the Utopia region of the Northern Territory, the daughter of the renowned artist Minnie Pwerle and the Irish station owner Jack Weir. As a child of mixed heritage she was hidden by her family, among them her aunt Emily Kame Kngwarreye, to protect her from forced removal; at the age of nine she was taken by authorities and raised in institutions across Australia, losing contact with her family and her languages. In the 1970s, after reconnecting with her family, she returned permanently to Utopia with her six children, became deeply involved in land rights activism, and in 1985 was elected the first female president of the Urapuntja Council. Inspired by her artistic family and particularly by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, she began painting in the late 1980s and quickly developed a distinctive style. Works such as Grass Seed Dreaming and My Mother's Country explore memory, ceremony and connection to land, built from fine dotting and linear motifs and at times from natural materials like ash and ochre, to evoke movement and depth. She exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, managed the careers of other artists including her mother Minnie Pwerle, and mentored the next generation. She remained active in the arts until shortly before her death in 2023.