{"product_id":"minnie-pwerle-awelye-2004-98x150cm","title":"Minnie Pwerle | 'Awelye, 2004' | 98x150cm","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCode:\u003c\/strong\u003e PPFAMP1091\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eArtist:\u003c\/strong\u003e Minnie Pwerle\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTitle:\u003c\/strong\u003e Awelye\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eArea:\u003c\/strong\u003e Utopia, NT\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCommunity:\u003c\/strong\u003e Anmatyerre \/ Alyawarre\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMedium:\u003c\/strong\u003e Acrylic On Linen\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 98x150cm\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYear:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2004\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAwelye is the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre word for women's ceremony, and for the designs painted on the body during it. Before ceremony, the women of the Pwerle family paint one another's chests, breasts and upper arms in ochre, the long lines following the curve of collarbone, shoulder and breast, and those designs carry their law: the songs and dances of Atnwengerrp, the knowledge of bush foods, and the obligations that bind women to Country and to each other. Painted in 2004, at the height of her short and remarkable career, \u003cem\u003eAwelye\u003c\/em\u003e brings that gesture onto linen. The sweeping bands are less a picture of body paint than a repetition of it, laid down with the same confident movement of the hand that Minnie Pwerle had practised in ceremony for most of her life, and they carry the rhythm of dancing feet across the sand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMinnie Pwerle (c. 1910–2006) was a senior Anmatyerre and Alyawarre woman from Atnwengerrp, in the Utopia region about 300 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs. Although the women of Utopia had been making batik and paintings for two decades, she did not pick up a brush until 1999 or 2000, when she was close to eighty; asked why she had waited so long, she said simply that no one had asked her. Her first solo exhibition followed at Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne in 2000, and within a few years she had been selected for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award and named among Australian Art Collector's fifty most collectable artists. Painting with a loose, unhesitating hand and a fearless sense of colour, she drew on the Awelye of her Country, the women's ceremonial designs of Atnwengerrp, and on the bush foods it sustains, among them bush melon and bush tomato. She continued to paint until two days before her death in March 2006. Her work is held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Queensland Art Gallery, and her daughter Barbara Weir and her sisters Emily, Galya and Molly Pwerle are also celebrated painters.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PPFA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67761226842345,"sku":"PPFAMP1091","price":15000.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0769\/0993\/6873\/files\/PPFAMP1091-Minnie_Pwerle-2004-Awelye-98x150cm-square-web.jpg?v=1792879741","url":"https:\/\/cag.art\/products\/minnie-pwerle-awelye-2004-98x150cm","provider":"Canberra Art Gallery","version":"1.0","type":"link"}