Sydney Morning Herald - A place in the sun for a late bloomer

Aboriginal Art Directory | 11.10.07

The Sydney Morning Herald - A place in the sun for a late bloomer
Steve Meacham
October 10, 2007

Article in The Age about the Emily Kame Kngwarreye exhibitions in Tokyo and Osaka, 2008.

Quoted from the article:

An exhibition set for Japan is more than a first for indigenous art, writes Steve Meacham.
Striking figure ... Emily Kame Kngwarreye's work is considered on a par with that of renowned international abstract artists.

What is the most extraordinary thing about the first contemporary Australian artist to be granted a major retrospective exhibition overseas?

That she is a dead black female who didn't even start painting until she was in her late 70s? Or that the exhibition is being mounted not in London, Paris or New York, but in Japan - in two of the country's most prestigious venues, the National Museum of Art in Osaka and the new National Art Centre in Tokyo?

And:

The works in the retrospective have been drawn from 45 different public, private and corporate collections in Australia, the US, Britain and Singapore. Fifteen of the earliest paintings have been lent by Janet Holmes a Court. Yet, ironically, when the Japanese asked Neale to create the show, her own institution didn't own a single work by the artist ("We do now," she adds quickly).

URL: http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/a-place-in-the-sun-for-a-late-bloomer/2007/10/09/1191695905186.html?page=2

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