Bush Melon Seed, 2001

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

123 x 90 cm

Est. $5,000 – $7,000

Hammer $6,000

Provenance: Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Melbourne, Vic, Cat No. AGOD9211 Private Collection, Vic, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings
Artwork story: Minnie Pwerle was born in the early 1920s in Alyawarre land, approximately 200 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs, and was a senior custodian of awelye connected to the bush melon Dreaming. She did not begin painting until late 1999, when visiting her daughter Barbara Weir in Adelaide. Barbara had been taken from her as a child by the Native Welfare Patrol, considered half-caste, and did not return to Utopia to find her mother until years later. It was at Barbara's son Fred Torres's DACOU Gallery (Dreaming Art Centre of Utopia) that Pwerle was first presented with canvases. Barbara Weir, her daughter, is herself represented in this sale. Broad black marks on a white ground, sweeping in wide curves and tight spirals, dense yet never congested: Bush Melon Seed 2001 is Pwerle at her most direct. The looping brushstrokes do not merely represent the seeds of the bush melon — they enact the body paint designs applied to women during awelye, the ceremony through which Anmatyerre women acknowledge their responsibilities for the land and their relationship to it, translated onto canvas with a physical authority whose origins lie entirely in that tradition. By 2001, when this work was painted, she had been working for just two years.

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Sale 3 · Lot 75

c.1920 – 2006

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

123 x 90 cm

Est. $5,000 – $7,000

Hammer $6,000

Provenance: Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Melbourne, Vic, Cat No. AGOD9211 Private Collection, Vic, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings
Artwork story: Minnie Pwerle was born in the early 1920s in Alyawarre land, approximately 200 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs, and was a senior custodian of awelye connected to the bush melon Dreaming. She did not begin painting until late 1999, when visiting her daughter Barbara Weir in Adelaide. Barbara had been taken from her as a child by the Native Welfare Patrol, considered half-caste, and did not return to Utopia to find her mother until years later. It was at Barbara's son Fred Torres's DACOU Gallery (Dreaming Art Centre of Utopia) that Pwerle was first presented with canvases. Barbara Weir, her daughter, is herself represented in this sale. Broad black marks on a white ground, sweeping in wide curves and tight spirals, dense yet never congested: Bush Melon Seed 2001 is Pwerle at her most direct. The looping brushstrokes do not merely represent the seeds of the bush melon — they enact the body paint designs applied to women during awelye, the ceremony through which Anmatyerre women acknowledge their responsibilities for the land and their relationship to it, translated onto canvas with a physical authority whose origins lie entirely in that tradition. By 2001, when this work was painted, she had been working for just two years.