Minnie Pwerle: the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre custodian of Atnwengerrp who began painting on canvas at the age of 80
For most of her life her art had been the body. As custodian of the Awelye Atnwengerrp, the women's ceremony belonging to her country of Atnwengerrp near the Sandover River. She applied paint to the upper bodies of women before ceremony, tracing the designs that had been carried down through her family for generations. It was only around 1999 to 2000, when she was approximately 80, that she first painted on canvas. She was encouraged to do so by her daughter Barbara Weir, who had herself only recently returned to Utopia after being taken from her mother as a child by the Native Welfare Patrol. Minnie Pwerle was born between 1910 and 1922 in the Utopia region of the Northern Territory, a woman of the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre peoples. She died on 18 March 2006.
The Utopia community had been painting in batik since 1977 and on canvas since 1998, and it was already known internationally through the work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Minnie's sister-in-law. Minnie's paintings brought a different energy: broad, luminous flowing lines and circles in vibrant reds, electric blues and shocking pinks, depicting the body paint designs of Awelye ceremony and the bush melon (Anemangkerr) found only in Atnwengerrp country. Her style was immediately compared to Tony Tuckson for its free-flowing linear quality and to the Fauves for its use of colour. She had never visited a gallery or museum. She painted without hesitation and without correction.
Within two years of beginning, her work was in major public collections. She was a finalist in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2002 and 2005, and in 2003 her asking price of $44,000 for Awelye Atnwengerrp was the second highest in the entire exhibition and the highest for any central or western desert artist. Australian Art Collector named her one of Australia's 50 most collectible artists in 2004. With that prominence came exploitation: there were documented reports of her being taken against her will by people wanting her to paint for them, and her work was forged. Her paintings are held in the AGNSW, NGV, AGSA and Queensland Art Gallery, and were included in a 2009 exhibition of Indigenous Australian painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her daughter Barbara Weir continues to paint.
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