Charmaine Pwerle | 'Awelye, 2024' | 60x60cm

Code: CHAPW0635

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 return again and again to the ceremonial body paint designs of women's business, passed down through her grandmother's country of Atnwengerrp. Awelye refers both to the ceremony itself and to the markings applied to the upper arms, breasts and shoulders of women during it — sweeping curved lines that follow the contours of the body, and circular forms that mark the sites where ceremony takes place. Painted on canvas, these designs carry the same bold, unhesitating gesture as the paint applied by hand, a line Pwerle inherited directly from the women who raised her.

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.