By James Brewer
A silk batik crafted in 1988, an artwork without a title, hangs doubled and scroll-like from ceiling to floor, stopping visitors in their tracks at the latest Tate Modern show. This mighty piece exerts emotional sway even on viewers who will have already gasped in earlier rooms at the mastery of the late Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray.
Her instinctive talent produced vivid evocations of what she called her Country – which is not the colonist-created nation of Australia, but the expression that Indigenous people use for the land around them, and its water, sky, plants, animals, myths, songs and spirits.
The suspended batik in tones of golden yellow and muted browns is perhaps the most gorgeous piece in a striking display accentuated by enormous, vibrant wax-resist prints on silk and cotton, amid a series of large-scale, intricate, acrylic-painted canvases.
Emily Kam Kngwarray (born about 1914, died 1996) fashioned glowingly compelling works that reflect her dedication to her heritage as woman of the Anmatyerr people born in the ancestral land of Alhalker in the Northern Territory. Kngwarray was the name of her subsection in the kinship system, and the name Kam was given to her by her grandfather. The word kam in the Anmatyerr language is the seeds and winged seedpod of the pencil yam – a slim creeping vine with edible roots and heart-shaped leaves and that grows above and below ground. Emily Kam identified with the plant, insisting “I am Kam/kam.”
Early in life, like others in her group, she worked for one of the white pastoralists who made claim to parcels of land. tending their animals and labouring in the kitchens for subsistence wages. She was to become one of the most sought-after artists in Australia. Large-scale abstract batiks such as the shimmering 10 metre cloth have been scooped up for major collections, public and private. Emily Kam assembled sections of cascading components which she supported across her lap as she sat cross-legged on the ground. A spectacular selection is seen in the extensive tribute to the artist by the London exhibition running until January 11, 2026.
Emily Kam was among peoples who had moved back to their traditional land, a return facilitated by the Aboriginal Lands Rights Act of 1976. They gained a reputation for producing beautiful batiks, a Balinese tradition introduced to women’s workshops, and for their intensely dotted paintings. Emily Kam was the matriarch (“the old woman” as her admiring colleagues referred to her) at Utopia Station, northeast of Alice Springs (the town’s traditional name is Mparntwe). Utopia is one of many stations established as a social enterprise and means of income support for the disadvantaged communities.
The residents of Utopia produced revitalised designs in batik incorporating their traditional elements and using modern acrylic paints on canvas and board.
Emily Kam was in her late 60s when she learned batik, for 11 years using the pattern-making wax process on lengths of cotton and later silk. When that became physically demanding for her, in her late seventies the tireless artisan took up acrylics, embarking on the first of what would be some 3,000 pictures over an eight-year span. From mid-1989, she painted almost daily, often producing more than one canvas in each session. Applying acrylics on flat surfaces, it was easy to build up layers and unite the colours in a way she had done with batik.
In the dot-painted motifs are coded the vegetation and animals of the desert around her, the beliefs and stories and secrets of spiritual life, everything joined in an opulent constellation. She had to hand a deep knowledge of the awely, the designs as a senior woman she ritually painted in ochres on kinswomen’s bodies. An intimate six-and-a-half-minute film made by Tamarind Tree Pictures in 2023 helps explain the women’s lore including body-painting and ceremonial dance.
The exhibition begins by presenting one of her earliest batiks on cotton from 1977, alongside Emu Woman from 1988, her first work on canvas that brought her to national attention. This was one of many impressions relating to the emu (ankerr), reflecting the flightless bird’s significance to Aboriginal peoples, and of the pencil yam.
The batik project Utopia: A Picture Story was completed in 1988, the first of several collective enterprises supported by Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association and then purchased by the Holmes à Court Collection. Janet Holmes à Court, a prominent Australian businesswoman and philanthropist, has played a great part in bringing Emily Kam to national and world attention. The Collection consists of more than 5,000 Australian and Western Australian artworks with a strong emphasis on Indigenous endeavour.
As Emily Kam became prominent in the wider art world, her works sold for thousands of dollars, and she was represented at international arts festivals, as was the case with Emu Dreaming (1988), and two abstract works, Untitled (1988) and Untitled (1989).
In Emu Dreaming the border pattern stands for the pencil yarn from Alhalker Country. The alyatywereng (woollybutt grass) that proliferates there also features in that work. It floats on a background with abundant goannas and perenties (types of lizard), bush turkeys and small insects, interspersed with body paint designs and yellow which suggests the fruits of intekw (the fan-flower plant) foraged by emus.
The Dreaming relates to the spiritual creation of the land, animals and people. The prominence given to emus by Emily Kam highlights their importance as a Dreaming for Alhalker Country. Emus are one of the main themes in the awely ceremonies. Emily Kam references the different behaviours of the birds, and there are specific words for young and old emus, and terms for parts of their bodies – their necks, feet and feathers – that do not apply to any other bird. Their three-toed footprints track across her canvases and batiks, as they are imagined seeking water.
The painting Old Man Emu with Babies reflects the fact that it is the male emu who cares for the chicks.
The suspended batik referred to in our intro is in the Holmes à Court Collection. Mrs Holmes à Court became chairperson of one of Australia’s largest private companies after the sudden death of her husband Robert in 1990. “The remote Aboriginal community of Utopia and the development of the art of that region became an early focus for The Holmes à Court Collection,” she writes on her Collection website. “Robert and I became interested in the original batik project of the early 1980’s, which produced an extraordinary body of work by Aboriginal women working in a non-traditional medium. Subsequent projects such as ‘Utopia Women’s Paintings’ and the ‘One Dreaming (Yam Story)’ revealed unique collective and individual strengths from which Emily Kame Kngwarreye emerged as a major artist. Her influence on the other members of her community, and on contemporary Aboriginal art, was profound.”
Painted in earthy ochres, Ntang Dreaming of 1989 depicts the edible seeds of the widespread woollybutt grass (alyatywereng), while Ankerr (emu) from 1989 maps the bird’s footprints between sources of water. “If you close your eyes and imagine the paintings in your mind’s eye, you will see them transform. They are real—what Kngwarray painted is alive and true,” said her kinswomen Jedda Kngwarray Purvis and Josie osie Petyarr Kunoth in 2023.
Major works on loan are joined by acrylic paintings acquired for Tate’s collection in 2019: Untitled (Alhalker) 1989, Ntang 1990, Untitled 1990. and from the National Gallery of Victoria the three-metre Kam 1991 insynthetic polymer paint on canvas which features myriad dots representing pencil yam seeds and pods at various stages of maturity
A change of format is seen in the 22-panel The Alhalker suite (1993) which is owned by the National Gallery of Australia, and in other works she titled Awely. The Alhalker suite is one of her most ambitious works, offering a portrait of Alhalker Country, paying homage to the Altyerr, the eternal life force that created the land and life and social and cultural practices. Bright pastel pinks and blues evoking the wildflowers which carpet the landscape after rainfall, and collections of merging dots represent rockfaces and grasslands.
In her final years, she changed style, using reds and yellows to paint broad parallel lines which may refer to the incision of cuts to the body to obtain blood, believed to help to heal grief and mourning.
The exhibition culminates with Yam awely from 1995, a weave of lines in effect denoting a song of happiness through the connection between artist and her Country and its grasses, yams, roots and tracks.
This, the first large-scale presentation in Europe of the artist’s output, was created in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, bringing together more than 70 works, many seen outside Australia for the first time.
Emily Kam Kngwarray, the begetter of such remarkable visual works, was a grand dame, sister, friend, storyteller, singer, and custodian of Country.
Tate presents the exhibition in The Eyal Ofer Galleries in partnership with the National Gallery of Australia and Wesfarmers Arts. Further lead support came from Fondation Opale, with additional support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
It is curated by Kelli Cole, a Warumungu and Luritja woman who is director of Curatorial & Engagement, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Gallery of Australia; Kimberley Moulton, Adjunct Curator, Indigenous Art, Hyundai Tate Research Centre Transnational and Michael Raymond, curator of international Art, Tate Modern. It is based on an exhibition curated by Kelli Cole, and Hetti Perkins of the Arrernte and Kalkadoon peoples.
Images in detail:
Untitled, 1988. By Emily Kam Kngwarray. Batik on silk. Janet Holmes à Court Collection, Perth.
Emu Dreaming, 1988. By Emily Kam Kngwarray. Batik on silk. Janet Holmes à Court Collection. Perth.
Ntang, 1990. By Emily Kam Kngwarray. Acrylic paint on canvas. Tate © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency. Licensed by DACS 2025.
Ntang Dreaming, 1989. By Emily Kam Kngwarray. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency. Licensed by DACS 2025.
Kam 1991. By Emily Kam Kngwarray. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. National Gallery of Victoria. Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992. © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency. Licensed by DACS 2025.
Emily Kam Kngwarray photographed near Mparntwe/Alice Springs in 1980. © Toly Sawenko.
The Alhalker suite, 1993. By Emily Kam Kngwarray. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency. Licensed by DACS 2025.
Yam awely 1995. By Emily Kam Kngwarray. Acrylic paint on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency. Licensed by DACS 2025.
The exhibition is at Tate Modern until January 11, 2026. Open daily 10.00–18.00
