[KNGWARREYE]. Utopia : Women, country and batik

Written and illustrated by Jenny Green. [Utopia, N.T.] : Utopia Womens’ Batik Group, [1981]. Quarto, screenprinted wrappers (light edge wear and handling marks), pp. [25], illustrated with portraits of the artists and the landscape. ‘This publication was produced for an exhibition of batik from Utopia initially presented at the Adelaide Festival Centre Gallery in October, 1981, and made possible by generous grants from Aboriginal Benefits Trust Association, Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council, Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Printed by Alice Springs Printing & Publishing’ – colophon.

Deaccessioned from the AIATSIS Library, with their wet stamp on the upper wrapper, no other library markings. Correspondence with AIATSIS (8th April 2025) confirms the work was legitimately deaccessioned and is not an estray from the collection.

The first appearance in print of indigenous artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (or Emily Kam Ngwarray) was born circa 1910 at Alhalkere, Soakage Bore, in the Utopia community of the Northern Territory. In 1977, a series of government sponsored workshops, facilitated by artist Jenny Green, were brought to Utopia to teach the Aboriginal people the art of non-indigenous art of batik. These workshops saw the origins of the Aboriginal women’s art movement in Utopia, the first time indigenous women created artworks in their own right. In 1978 the Utopia Women’s Batik Group was formed, and in 1980 the first exhibition was held in Alice Springs. The following year, the Group exhibited in Adelaide, where Emily Kngwarreye made her first interstate trip, the present publication created to tell the story of the women. The first portrait is of Emily Ngwarai singing awulya, photographed by Jenny Green. It is almost certainly the first appearance in print of the artist Emily Kngwarrere (her name without agreed spelling at that time). Acrylic paints would be introduced to the community in 1988, where Emily Kngwarreye quickly took to the medium, and produced an astonishing 3000 paintings in a brief eight-year career.

Emily died in 1996 and is regarded as one of the most significant painters in the history of Australian art.

Note: We are grateful to Dr. Jenny Green for the following information: “The woman on the cover is Lily Sandover Kngwarrey. She was from Atarrkert and hence the spelling (Alyawarr). She and Emily were closely associated, although not from the same ‘country’.” (correspondence with the author, 19 April 2021).