Minnie Pwerle
Encyclopedia
Minnie Pwerle was an Australian Aboriginal
artist. She came from Utopia, Northern Territory
(Unupurna in native language), a cattle station in the Sandover area of Central Australia
300 kilometres (186.4 mi) northeast of Alice Springs.
Minnie began painting in 2000 at about the age of 80, and her pictures soon became popular and sought-after works of contemporary Indigenous Australian art
. In the years after she took up painting on canvas
, until she died in 2006, Minnie's works were exhibited around Australia and collected by major galleries, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales
, the National Gallery of Victoria
and the Queensland Art Gallery
. With popularity came pressure from those keen to acquire her work. She was allegedly "kidnapped" by people who wanted her to paint for them, and there have been media reports of her work being forged. Minnie's work is often compared with that of her sister-in-law Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who also came from the Sandover and took up acrylic painting late in life. Minnie's daughter, Barbara Weir
, is a respected artist in her own right.
Minnie was born in the early 20th century near Utopia, Northern Territory
, 300 kilometres (186.4 mi) north-east of Alice Springs, Northern Territory
. Utopia was a cattle station
that was returned to Indigenous ownership in the late 1970s. It is part of a broader region known as the Sandover, containing about 20 Indigenous outstation
s and centred on the Sandover River. Minnie was one of the traditional owners of Utopia station recognised in the 1980 Indigenous land claim
made over the property; her particular country was known as Atnwengerrp.
Pwerle (in the Anmatyerre
language) or Apwerle (in Alyawarr) is a skin name
, one of 16 used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous
people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners, and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus "Minnie" is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.
Estimates of Minnie's birthdate vary widely. The National Gallery of Victoria estimates around 1915; Birnberg's biographical survey of Indigenous artists from central Australia gives a birth date of around 1920; The new McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art suggests around 1922; Elizabeth Fortescue's biographical essay in Art of Utopia offers a range between 1910 and 1920. The uncertainty arises because Indigenous Australians often estimate dates of birth by comparison with other events, especially for those born before contact with European Australians. Minnie was one of six children, and had three sisters: Molly, born around 1920, Emily, born around 1922, and Galya, born in the 1930s. She was of the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre Aboriginal language groups
.
In about 1945, Minnie had an affair with a married man, Jack Weir, described by one source as a pastoral station owner, by a second as "an Irish Australian man who owned a cattle run called Bundy River Station", and by another as an Irish "stockman". A relationship such as that between Minnie and Weir was illegal, and the pair were jailed; Weir died shortly after his release. Minnie had a child from their liaison, who was partly raised by Minnie's sister-in-law, artist Emily Kngwarreye
, and became prominent Indigenous artist Barbara Weir
. Barbara Weir was one of the Stolen Generations. At about the age of nine, she was forcibly taken from her family, who believed she had then been killed. The family were reunited in the late 1960s, but Barbara did not form a close bond with Minnie. Barbara married Mervyn Torres, and as of 2000 had six children and thirteen grandchildren.
Minnie went on to have six further children with her husband "Motorcar" Jim Ngala, including Aileen, Betty, Raymond and Dora Mpetyane, and two others who by 2010 had died. Her grandchildren include Fred Torres, who founded private art gallery DACOU in 1993, and artist Teresa Purla (or Pwerle).
Minnie began painting in late 1999 or 2000, when she was almost 80. When asked why she had not begun earlier (painting and batik works had been created at Utopia for over 20 years), her daughter Barbara Weir reported Minnie's answer as being that "no-one had asked her". By the 2000s, she was reported as living at Alparra, the largest of Utopia's communities, or at Urultja (also Irrultja, again in the Sandover region). Sprightly and outgoing, even in her eighties she could outrun younger women chasing goanna
s for bushfood, and she continued to create art works until two days before her death on 18 March 2006. She was outlived by all her sisters except Maggie Pwerle, mother of artists Gloria
and Kathleen Petyarre
(or Pitjara).
s. By 1981 there were 50 artists at Utopia creating batik works; 88 artists participated in a major design project supported by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association
. Although several sources comment that artistic activity at Utopia began with batik and only later moved to painting, they do not state whether or not Minnie was a textile artist before she took up the brush. The National Gallery of Victoria's brief biography suggests that she did not participate in the making of batik, but she was aware of it.
When Minnie decided to take up painting in 2000, the reception was immediately positive: she had her first solo exhibition that same year at Melbourne's Flinders Lane Gallery. She was first selected to exhibit in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2002. One of her pieces, Awelye Atnwengerrp, was exhibited in the 2003 Award, in which her name was given as Minnie Motorcar Apwerl (Pwerle). The artist's asking price for the picture, A$
44,000, was the second-highest in the exhibition and the highest for an artist from the central and western deserts. Her painting Awelye Atnwengerrp 2 was exhibited in the 2005 competition.
She was named by Australian Art Collector
as one of Australia's 50 most collectible artists in 2004.
There were many group and solo exhibitions of Minnie's work at private galleries between 2000 and 2006. These included exhibitions at Japinka Gallery in Western Australia in 2003 and 2005, Adelaide's Dacou Gallery in 2000 and 2002, Sydney's Gallery Savah between 2000 and 2002 as well as in 2006, and Melbourne's Flinders Lane Gallery in 2000, 2004 and 2006, the last of which was a joint exhibition conducted with her three sisters, all of whom are artists in their own right.
Desert art specialist Professor Vivien Johnson
noted that Minnie was one of the Utopia artists whose style was "radically different from [that of] all the other painting communities in the Western Desert—and stunningly successful in the market place". Her most famous fellow artist was Emily Kngwarreye, whose painting Earth's Creation
in 2007 sold for over $1 million, setting a record for the price paid for a painting by an Indigenous Australian artist. Unlike Minnie, Emily had been an active participant in the early batik movement at Utopia.
Minnie (like Emily) was often placed under considerable pressure to produce works. She was reportedly "kidnapped" by people "keen to go to often quite bizarre lengths to acquire" her work. Minnie's experience reflected broader issues in the industry surrounding artists, who were often older, had limited education or English language ability, and faced serious poverty both themselves and amongst their families. In addition to being pressured to paint by others, there were media reports suggesting that some of the vast number of paintings traded under Minnie's name were not created by her at all.
(or Women's Dreaming). Indigenous art expert Jenny Green believes Minnie's work continues the tradition of "gestural abstractionism
" established by Emily Kngwarreye, which contrasted with the use of recognisable traditional motifs—such as animal tracks—in the works of Western Desert
artists. Brisbane artist and gallerist Michael Eather
has likened her work not only to that of Emily, but also to Australian abstract impressionist
artist Tony Tuckson
.
Minnie's paintings include two main design themes. The first is free-flowing and parallel lines in a pendulous outline, depicting the body painting
designs used in women's ceremonies, or awelye. The second theme involves circular shapes, used to symbolise bush tomato
(Solanum chippendalei
), bush melon, and northern wild orange (Capparis
umbonata), among a number of forms of bushfood
represented in her works. Together, the designs were characterised by one reviewer as "broad, luminescent flowing lines and circles".
, National Gallery of Victoria
and Queensland Art Gallery
. It was also included in a 2009 exhibition of Indigenous Australian painting at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her works later formed the basis of a series of designer rugs, and, together with paintings by her sisters, illustrated the cover of art critic Benjamin Genocchio's book, Dollar Dreaming. Described by art dealer Hank Ebes as the works of "a genius", Minnie's paintings were typically selling for $5,000 in 2005; the highest price fetched on the secondary market at that time was $43,000.
Regarded as one of Australia's leading contemporary women artists, Minnie ranks alongside other notable Indigenous female painters Dorothy Napangardi
, Gloria Petyarre
and Kathleen Petyarre
. One of a number of women such as Emily Kngwarreye who dominated central and western desert painting in the first decade of the 21st century, Minnie is considered to be one of Australia's best-known Indigenous artists, whose work "the market couldn't get enough [of]".
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
artist. She came from Utopia, Northern Territory
Utopia, Northern Territory
Utopia is an Aboriginal homeland formed in November 1978 by the amalgamation of the former Utopia pastoral lease with a tract of unalienated land to its north. It covers an area of 3500 square kilometres, transected by the Sandover River, and lies on a traditional boundary of the Alyawarra and...
(Unupurna in native language), a cattle station in the Sandover area of Central Australia
Central Australia
Central Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs in Australia. It is sometimes referred to as Centralia; likewise the people of the area are sometimes called Centralians...
300 kilometres (186.4 mi) northeast of Alice Springs.
Minnie began painting in 2000 at about the age of 80, and her pictures soon became popular and sought-after works of contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians. It is generally regarded as beginning with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory in 1971, involving artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri...
. In the years after she took up painting on canvas
Acrylic paint
Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry...
, until she died in 2006, Minnie's works were exhibited around Australia and collected by major galleries, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...
, the National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
and the Queensland Art Gallery
Queensland Art Gallery
The Queensland Art Gallery is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre, and is located nearest to Brisbane River at South Bank...
. With popularity came pressure from those keen to acquire her work. She was allegedly "kidnapped" by people who wanted her to paint for them, and there have been media reports of her work being forged. Minnie's work is often compared with that of her sister-in-law Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who also came from the Sandover and took up acrylic painting late in life. Minnie's daughter, Barbara Weir
Barbara Weir
Barbara Weir is an Australian Aboriginal artist and politician. One of the Stolen Generations, she was removed from her aboriginal family and raised in a series of foster homes. After becoming reunited with her mother in the 1960s and divorced in 1977, Weir eventually returned to her family...
, is a respected artist in her own right.
Personal life
Utopia, Northern Territory
Utopia is an Aboriginal homeland formed in November 1978 by the amalgamation of the former Utopia pastoral lease with a tract of unalienated land to its north. It covers an area of 3500 square kilometres, transected by the Sandover River, and lies on a traditional boundary of the Alyawarra and...
, 300 kilometres (186.4 mi) north-east of Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Alice Springs is the second largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Popularly known as "the Alice" or simply "Alice", Alice Springs is situated in the geographic centre of Australia near the southern border of the Northern Territory...
. Utopia was a cattle station
Cattle station
Cattle station is an Australian term for a large farm , whose main activity is the rearing of cattle. In Australia, the owner of a cattle station is called a grazier...
that was returned to Indigenous ownership in the late 1970s. It is part of a broader region known as the Sandover, containing about 20 Indigenous outstation
Outstation
Historically, an outstation was a subsidiary homestead or other dwelling, on Australian sheep or cattle stations which were large enough to have more than a day's travel between different parts of the property....
s and centred on the Sandover River. Minnie was one of the traditional owners of Utopia station recognised in the 1980 Indigenous land claim
Native title
Native title is the Australian version of the common law doctrine of aboriginal title.Native title is "the recognition by Australian law that some Indigenous people have rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws and customs"...
made over the property; her particular country was known as Atnwengerrp.
Pwerle (in the Anmatyerre
Anmatyerre
Anmatyerr, are an Indigenous Australian people, or language group, from the Northern Territory. They are from an area near Arnka , Arwerlt Atwaty Anmatyerr, are an Indigenous Australian people, or language group, from the Northern Territory. They are from an area near Arnka (Mount Leichhardt),...
language) or Apwerle (in Alyawarr) is a skin name
Australian Aboriginal kinship
Australian Aboriginal kinship is the system of law governing social interaction, particularly marriage, in traditional Australian Aboriginal culture...
, one of 16 used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners, and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus "Minnie" is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.
Estimates of Minnie's birthdate vary widely. The National Gallery of Victoria estimates around 1915; Birnberg's biographical survey of Indigenous artists from central Australia gives a birth date of around 1920; The new McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art suggests around 1922; Elizabeth Fortescue's biographical essay in Art of Utopia offers a range between 1910 and 1920. The uncertainty arises because Indigenous Australians often estimate dates of birth by comparison with other events, especially for those born before contact with European Australians. Minnie was one of six children, and had three sisters: Molly, born around 1920, Emily, born around 1922, and Galya, born in the 1930s. She was of the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre Aboriginal language groups
Australian Aboriginal languages
The Australian Aboriginal languages comprise several language families and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines of Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islanders...
.
In about 1945, Minnie had an affair with a married man, Jack Weir, described by one source as a pastoral station owner, by a second as "an Irish Australian man who owned a cattle run called Bundy River Station", and by another as an Irish "stockman". A relationship such as that between Minnie and Weir was illegal, and the pair were jailed; Weir died shortly after his release. Minnie had a child from their liaison, who was partly raised by Minnie's sister-in-law, artist Emily Kngwarreye
Emily Kngwarreye
Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. She is one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of contemporary Indigenous Australian art.-Life:Born in 1910, Kngwarreye did not take up painting seriously until...
, and became prominent Indigenous artist Barbara Weir
Barbara Weir
Barbara Weir is an Australian Aboriginal artist and politician. One of the Stolen Generations, she was removed from her aboriginal family and raised in a series of foster homes. After becoming reunited with her mother in the 1960s and divorced in 1977, Weir eventually returned to her family...
. Barbara Weir was one of the Stolen Generations. At about the age of nine, she was forcibly taken from her family, who believed she had then been killed. The family were reunited in the late 1960s, but Barbara did not form a close bond with Minnie. Barbara married Mervyn Torres, and as of 2000 had six children and thirteen grandchildren.
Minnie went on to have six further children with her husband "Motorcar" Jim Ngala, including Aileen, Betty, Raymond and Dora Mpetyane, and two others who by 2010 had died. Her grandchildren include Fred Torres, who founded private art gallery DACOU in 1993, and artist Teresa Purla (or Pwerle).
Minnie began painting in late 1999 or 2000, when she was almost 80. When asked why she had not begun earlier (painting and batik works had been created at Utopia for over 20 years), her daughter Barbara Weir reported Minnie's answer as being that "no-one had asked her". By the 2000s, she was reported as living at Alparra, the largest of Utopia's communities, or at Urultja (also Irrultja, again in the Sandover region). Sprightly and outgoing, even in her eighties she could outrun younger women chasing goanna
Goanna
Goanna is the name used to refer to any number of Australian monitor lizards of the genus Varanus, as well as to certain species from Southeast Asia.There are around 30 species of goanna, 25 of which are found in Australia...
s for bushfood, and she continued to create art works until two days before her death on 18 March 2006. She was outlived by all her sisters except Maggie Pwerle, mother of artists Gloria
Gloria Petyarre
Gloria Petyarre is an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Anmatyerre community, just north of Alice Springs...
and Kathleen Petyarre
Kathleen Petyarre
Kathleen Petyarre is an eminent Australian Aboriginal artist, known for her paintings displaying an extremely refined layering technique with intricate dotting. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings, concepts that may be difficult to grasp for the non-Aboriginal viewer...
(or Pitjara).
Career
In the 1970s and 1980s Utopia became well known for the design and production of batikBatik
Batik is a cloth that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. Batik or fabrics with the traditional batik patterns are found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, China, Azerbaijan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, and Singapore.Javanese traditional batik, especially from...
s. By 1981 there were 50 artists at Utopia creating batik works; 88 artists participated in a major design project supported by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association
Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association
The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association is an organisation founded in 1980 by Freda Glynn, Phillip Batty and John Macumba in order to expose Aboriginal music and culture to the rest of Australia from its Alice Springs media centre through the film-making industry, commencing broadcast...
. Although several sources comment that artistic activity at Utopia began with batik and only later moved to painting, they do not state whether or not Minnie was a textile artist before she took up the brush. The National Gallery of Victoria's brief biography suggests that she did not participate in the making of batik, but she was aware of it.
When Minnie decided to take up painting in 2000, the reception was immediately positive: she had her first solo exhibition that same year at Melbourne's Flinders Lane Gallery. She was first selected to exhibit in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2002. One of her pieces, Awelye Atnwengerrp, was exhibited in the 2003 Award, in which her name was given as Minnie Motorcar Apwerl (Pwerle). The artist's asking price for the picture, A$
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
44,000, was the second-highest in the exhibition and the highest for an artist from the central and western deserts. Her painting Awelye Atnwengerrp 2 was exhibited in the 2005 competition.
She was named by Australian Art Collector
Australian Art Collector
Australian Art Collector is a quarterly art magazine. It primarily covers Australian contemporary and Indigenous art, but also occasionally features New Zealand and international artists.-Publication:...
as one of Australia's 50 most collectible artists in 2004.
There were many group and solo exhibitions of Minnie's work at private galleries between 2000 and 2006. These included exhibitions at Japinka Gallery in Western Australia in 2003 and 2005, Adelaide's Dacou Gallery in 2000 and 2002, Sydney's Gallery Savah between 2000 and 2002 as well as in 2006, and Melbourne's Flinders Lane Gallery in 2000, 2004 and 2006, the last of which was a joint exhibition conducted with her three sisters, all of whom are artists in their own right.
Desert art specialist Professor Vivien Johnson
Vivien Johnson
Vivien Johnson is an Australian sociologist, writer on Indigenous Australian art, and editor-in-chief of the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online....
noted that Minnie was one of the Utopia artists whose style was "radically different from [that of] all the other painting communities in the Western Desert—and stunningly successful in the market place". Her most famous fellow artist was Emily Kngwarreye, whose painting Earth's Creation
Earth's Creation
-The Artist & Painting:Emily Kame Kngwarreye painted Earth's Creation in 1994 at Utopia, north east of Alice Springs.She was a senior Anmatyerre woman, who only commenced painting when she was aged about 80...
in 2007 sold for over $1 million, setting a record for the price paid for a painting by an Indigenous Australian artist. Unlike Minnie, Emily had been an active participant in the early batik movement at Utopia.
Minnie (like Emily) was often placed under considerable pressure to produce works. She was reportedly "kidnapped" by people "keen to go to often quite bizarre lengths to acquire" her work. Minnie's experience reflected broader issues in the industry surrounding artists, who were often older, had limited education or English language ability, and faced serious poverty both themselves and amongst their families. In addition to being pressured to paint by others, there were media reports suggesting that some of the vast number of paintings traded under Minnie's name were not created by her at all.
Style of painting
Minnie's style was spontaneous, and typified by "bold" and "vibrant" colour executed with great freedom. As with other contemporary artists of the central and western deserts, her paintings included depictions of stories or features for which she had responsibility within her family or clan, such as the Awelye Atnwengerrp dreamingDreaming (spirituality)
The Dreaming is a common term within the animist creation narrative of indigenous Australians for a personal, or group, creation and for what may be understood as the "timeless time" of formative creation and perpetual creating....
(or Women's Dreaming). Indigenous art expert Jenny Green believes Minnie's work continues the tradition of "gestural abstractionism
Action painting
Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...
" established by Emily Kngwarreye, which contrasted with the use of recognisable traditional motifs—such as animal tracks—in the works of Western Desert
Western Desert cultural bloc
The Western Desert cultural bloc or just Western Desert is a cultural region in Australia covering about 600,000 square kilometres, including the Gibson Desert, the Great Victoria Desert, the Great Sandy and Little Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia...
artists. Brisbane artist and gallerist Michael Eather
Michael Eather
Michael Eather is a contemporary Australian artist, based in Brisbane who helped found the Campfire Group, a significant cross-cultural artistic collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists.Eather grew up and was educated in Tasmania...
has likened her work not only to that of Emily, but also to Australian abstract impressionist
Abstract impressionism
Abstract Impressionism is a type of abstract painting where small brushstrokes build and structure large paintings...
artist Tony Tuckson
Tony Tuckson
John Anthony Tuckson , was an Abstract Expressionist artist, an art gallery director and previously a war-time Spitfire pilot...
.
Minnie's paintings include two main design themes. The first is free-flowing and parallel lines in a pendulous outline, depicting the body painting
Body painting
Body painting, or sometimes bodypainting, is a form of body art. Unlike tattoo and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, painted onto the human skin, and lasts for only several hours, or at most a couple of weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting...
designs used in women's ceremonies, or awelye. The second theme involves circular shapes, used to symbolise bush tomato
Bush tomato
The term bush tomato refers to the fruit or entire plants of certain nightshade species native to the more arid parts of Australia. While they are quite closely related to tomatoes , they might be even closer relatives of the eggplant , which they resemble in many details...
(Solanum chippendalei
Solanum chippendalei
Solanum chippendalei is a small fruiting shrub in the family Solanaceae, native to northern Australia. It is named after its discoverer, George Chippendale. The fruits, known as "bush tomatoes", are edible and are harvested in the wild....
), bush melon, and northern wild orange (Capparis
Capparis
Capparis is a flowering plant genus in the family Capparaceae which is included in the Brassicaceae in the unrevised APG II system. These plants are shrubs or lianas and are collectively known as caper shrubs or caperbushes...
umbonata), among a number of forms of bushfood
Bushfood
Bushfood traditionally relates to any food native to Australia and used as sustenance by the original inhabitants, the Australian Aborigines, but it is a reference to any native fauna/flora that is used for culinary and/or medicinal purposes regardless of which continent or culture it originates...
represented in her works. Together, the designs were characterised by one reviewer as "broad, luminescent flowing lines and circles".
Legacy
Minnie's art was quickly added to major public collections such as the Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery of South AustraliaArt Gallery of South Australia
The Art Gallery of South Australia , located on the cultural boulevard of North Terrace in Adelaide, is the premier visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of over 35,000 works of art, making it, after the National Gallery of Victoria, the largest state...
, National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
and Queensland Art Gallery
Queensland Art Gallery
The Queensland Art Gallery is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre, and is located nearest to Brisbane River at South Bank...
. It was also included in a 2009 exhibition of Indigenous Australian painting at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her works later formed the basis of a series of designer rugs, and, together with paintings by her sisters, illustrated the cover of art critic Benjamin Genocchio's book, Dollar Dreaming. Described by art dealer Hank Ebes as the works of "a genius", Minnie's paintings were typically selling for $5,000 in 2005; the highest price fetched on the secondary market at that time was $43,000.
Regarded as one of Australia's leading contemporary women artists, Minnie ranks alongside other notable Indigenous female painters Dorothy Napangardi
Dorothy Napangardi
Dorothy Napangardi is a distinguished contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from Mina Mina. She is one of around 3,000 Warlpiri speakers who live in or are originally from the Tanami Desert region of Central Australia....
, Gloria Petyarre
Gloria Petyarre
Gloria Petyarre is an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Anmatyerre community, just north of Alice Springs...
and Kathleen Petyarre
Kathleen Petyarre
Kathleen Petyarre is an eminent Australian Aboriginal artist, known for her paintings displaying an extremely refined layering technique with intricate dotting. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings, concepts that may be difficult to grasp for the non-Aboriginal viewer...
. One of a number of women such as Emily Kngwarreye who dominated central and western desert painting in the first decade of the 21st century, Minnie is considered to be one of Australia's best-known Indigenous artists, whose work "the market couldn't get enough [of]".
Major collections
- Art Gallery of NSW
- Art Gallery of South AustraliaArt Gallery of South AustraliaThe Art Gallery of South Australia , located on the cultural boulevard of North Terrace in Adelaide, is the premier visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of over 35,000 works of art, making it, after the National Gallery of Victoria, the largest state...
- Kelton FoundationKelton foundationThe Kelton Foundation of Santa Monica, California was founded in 1983 as a private non-profit 501 charitable organization...
- Kreglinger Collection
- National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
- Queensland Art GalleryQueensland Art GalleryThe Queensland Art Gallery is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre, and is located nearest to Brisbane River at South Bank...
- Thomas Vroom Collection
- Hank Ebes Collection
- AMPAMP LimitedAMP Limited is an Australian financial corporation. It operates primarily in Australia and New Zealand. AMP formed in 1849 as the Australian Mutual Provident Society, a non-profit life insurance company. In 1998 it was demutualised and listed on the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges...
Collection
External links
- Example of Minnie's early work, Anunapa, Akali (2001), National Gallery of Victoria.
- Photographic portrait of the artist at Mbantua fine art gallery and cultural museum.
- Minnie Pwerle on Artabase