Gloria Petyarre

On March 19^th 1999, Gloria Petyarre was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape painting at the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. David Gonski, Chairman of Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales announced the prize, at twelve noon, before a crowded room thronged with members of the media. At the time of the announcement Gloria was in a four-wheel drive vehicle heading away into the desert north-east of Alice Springs. The artist, unaware of the win, was travelling the Sandover Highway to Utopia and home.

Gloria was the first Aboriginal person to win one of the three major prizes (Archibald, Wynne and Sulman) awarded annually at this gallery. Each of these prizes carries with them a great deal of tradition and prestige. The Wynne prize is Australia’s longest running art prize and was awarded first in 1897. It has been won by such famous painters as Hans Heysen, Elioth Gruner, William Dobell and Lloyd Rees.

Prior to her winning this prestigious award some believed that her work should stand not just on its Aboriginality but in its own right as uncategorized  ‘contemporary’ art. Daphne Wallace, former curator of the Yiribana Gallery at the AGNSW and an unabashed admirer of Gloria’s work, enunciated this when she wrote, ‘I believe that her art should be included in Australian and Contemporary Art collections and not be restricted to Aboriginal Art departments’.  After her success in the Wynne Prize this evaluation was strengthened.

During the years after 1996 many observers predicted  that Gloria would soon come to be regarded as Australia’s outstanding female Aboriginal painter. Prior to that time Emily Kngwarreye held pride of place in the minds of most collectors and galleries. Gloria’s victory in the Wynne competition has assured her position in the history of Australian art and has done much to reduce the narrowing gap between indigenous and western art here.

Like Turkey Tolson, Gloria Petyarre has the ability to change her style from painting to painting and the prize-winning suite entitled ‘leaves’ is quite different to many of her other works. She does always retain, however, a decided simplicity  which is one of the great characteristics of her painting. In ‘Leaves’ she displays a mastery over colour, pattern and design shown through a highly accomplished technique of brushwork and paint application. The end result is enchanting and reinforces the notion that painters such as Gloria who have been brought up in such close contact with the land are in an authoritative position to picture and record it when the opportunity arises. The Wynne Prize afforded the perfect opportunity for Gloria to show her intimate knowledge of the land and seasons and her own deep spiritual devotion to an area which has been described by some commentators as ‘the dead heart’ of Australia. For Gloria, and many thousands of other desert painters such a term is ludicrous. The landscape is alive, supportive and inspirational. How else could it become the basis for such a vibrant, sensual work as ‘Leaves’ ?

Through the 1990’s Gloria has insisted on experimenting with her abstractions. Reviewing an exhibition of her work in 1996, Sebastian Smee of the Sydney Morning Herald made an interesting comparison between painters such as Mick Namarari, Gloria and their western counterparts. He wrote, ‘Their works glow with an intensity rarely matched by the bluffing, concept driven poses of much current Western abstraction’. Therein lays one of the great secrets for the success of desert art in the decades of the ‘80’s and 90’s.

Utopia, a cluster of outstations some two hundred and seventy kilometres to the north-east of Alice Springs, is close to the place where Gloria was born, about 1945. Aboriginal people had been driven from the area in 1927 after the Utopia Pastoral Lease was granted. Fifty years later the Aboriginal traditional owners were offered a ninety nine years leasehold on the area. This was accepted and later financed by the Aboriginal Land Fund Council. Gloria’s country is Atnangkere and she is an Anmatyerre speaker. The artist is one of seven sisters including the prominent painters, Kathleen Petyarre, Nancy Petyarre, Violet Petyarre and Ada Bird Petyarre (qv). The family had lived a traditional, nomadic life before settling at Utopia. 

The making of batik-designed fabrics, from 1977, was her introduction to visual art produced with western materials. Gloria is the niece of Emily Kngwarreye (qv). Together, and in the company of a number of the women from Utopia, they were instrumental in the production batik fabrics. Gloria shared in the early success and recognition of the group’s work. Important early exhibitions of the batik fabrics were held in Alice Springs (1980) and notably at the Adelaide Festival Centre in 1981. The latter exhibition was titled, ‘Floating Forests of Silk: Utopia Batik from the Desert’.