Charmaine Pwerle | 'Awelye, 2024' | 60x60cm

Code: CHAPW0624

Artist: Charmaine Pwerle

Title: Awelye

Area: Utopia (Urapuntja), NT

Community: Anmatyerre / Alyawarre

Medium: Acrylic On Linen

Size: 60x60cm

Year: 2024

Charmaine Pwerle's Awelye paintings take their name from the women's ceremonies of her grandmother's country, and from the body paint designs applied to the upper arms, breasts and shoulders of women taking part in them. On canvas these designs become sweeping, curved bands that follow the same lines once drawn across the skin, interrupted by circles marking the ceremonial sites where the women gather. The gestures are inherited, but each canvas is painted anew, the marks carrying the same confidence and rhythm passed down through her family.

Pwerle works here on a black ground that shows through in narrow slivers between the paint, giving the whole surface a sense of depth and shadow. Over it she builds a dense field of looping, interlocking bands in hot pink, crimson, white, orange and ochre, each stroke laid with a loaded brush so the paint sits thick and slightly ridged at the edges. The bands cross and double back on themselves in tight, repeated loops, never quite closing, so the surface hums with a restless, unbroken energy from edge to edge.

Set into this field are five concentric roundels, each built from nested rings of colour around a dark centre - one in soft pink and burgundy, another ringed in ochre and gold, others in deeper red and white. These sit like still points within the moving lines around them, marking the ceremonial ground the surrounding gestures move across. Up close the work is a thicket of individual strokes, each one distinct and unhesitating; from a distance the roundels surface first, anchoring the eye before the looping bands pull it back into motion.

The overall effect shifts between the two readings, the eye settling on a circle before being drawn back into the surrounding tangle, echoing the way ceremony moves between fixed sites and the paths travelled between them. The palette stays warm throughout, reds and pinks dominant with ochre and white threaded through, giving the canvas a heated, skin-like warmth appropriate to its subject.

Charmaine Pwerle was born in Alice Springs and raised on the Utopia homelands, granddaughter of Minnie Pwerle and daughter of Barbara Weir, growing up among senior painters including Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Gloria Petyarre. She returned to Utopia in 1992, a period in which she received ceremonial knowledge from senior women that now underpins her work. Painting in acrylic on linen, she carries her grandmother's bold, unhesitating line into a palette and rhythm distinctly her own, and continues to paint from Alice Springs, with her work shown across Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Charmaine Pwerle was born in Alice Springs in 1975 and raised on the Utopia homelands in the Northern Territory, within one of the most significant artistic families in Australian art. She is the daughter of the late Barbara Weir and the granddaughter of the late Minnie Pwerle, and grew up in the company of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre and the Pwerle sisters. Educated in Adelaide and later living in Melbourne, she returned to Utopia in 1992, a period in which senior women passed on the ceremonial knowledge that underpins her painting. Her practice centres on Awelye, the women's ceremonial body paint designs of her grandmother's country, Atnwengerrp. Sweeping curvilinear bands describe the marks applied to the breast, shoulders and upper arms during ceremony, while circular forms denote ceremonial sites and linear tracks record the routes women travelled in search of bush foods. Working in acrylic on linen, she paints with a confident, unhesitating line inherited from her grandmother, but in a palette and rhythm distinctly her own, ranging from restrained monochromes to saturated multi-colour fields. Her work has been shown throughout Australia and in the United Kingdom and Europe, and she continues to paint from Alice Springs.