POLLY NELSON NGALE

Poly (Polly) Ngal was born in 1936 into the Anmatyarre tribe. Later she moved to Camel Camp in Utopia with her family and sisters, Kathleen Ngal, Maisy Ngal and Angeline Pwerl.

Like many of the women in Utopia, Poly began her artistic career in batik in the early late 1970s, before venturing into painting with acrylic paints on canvas. Poly often assisted her sister Kathleen and also the late Emily Kngwarrey with whom she shared the same country. Together with her sisters, Poly is a senior custodian of the Bush Plum Dreaming.

Poly's work depicts the Bush Plum and its effects on her country, illustrating the topography in shades of reds, oranges and yellows reflecting the varying seasonal palette. Like her sister Kathleen, Poly's work uses layer upon layer of colour, creating a multi-dimensional effect to reveal the Bush Plum Ankwety - and her country - Alparra in all its glory.

“Poly’s work is the most sensual and loose of the three, echoing Emily's magical touch in her layering of colour to create a rich atmospheric surface, which is very alive, suffused with colour and movement, and redolent of the natural cycles of her totem — the bush plum. Poly has a delicacy of touch reminiscent of the very fine batik work the women were doing there in the 80’s. Hers is very much the work of an older woman, that magic in the blending of underdotting and overdotting, loose, natural, and sensual.”

References

Brody, A., 1989, Utopia Women's Paintings: the First Works on Canvas, A Summer Project, 1988-89, exhib. cat., Heytesbury Holdings, Perth. (C)

Brody, A., 1990, Utopia: a Picture Story, 88 Silk Batiks from the Robert Holmes a Court Collection, Heytesbury Holdings Ltd, Perth. (C)