Emily Kam Kngwarray’s Anwerlarr Anganenty signifies her principal Dreaming, the anwerlarr (pencil yam, Vigna lanceolata sp.), associated with her birthplace, Alhalker. This audacious monochrome work, painted continuously over two days in her penultimate year, recalls her batiks of 1977–88 in which fluid lines derived from women’s awely ceremonies prevail over dots. Thus the work of Kngwarray’s late career is deeply rooted in her beginnings as an artist and in making arlkeny (body markings) for awely ceremony.
The vast composition, accomplished in a single, continuous stroke, conceptualises the veins, sinews and contours of Alhalker, seen from a planar perspective. Embracing the monumental surface, Kngwarray’s holistic vision is sustained in all of the minute sections, through contrasting rhythms: angular, meandering long stretches, short jabs of tension, energetic rushes and volatile lines. The intuitive drawing signifies the subterranean roots of the long tuberous vegetable, the cracks that form in the ground when the pencil yam ripens and the striped body paintings worn by Anmatyerr women in awely ceremonies.
Emily Kam Kngwarray
Anwerlarr anganenty (Big yam Dreaming) 1995
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
291.1 x 801.8 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Donald and Janet Holt and family, Governors, 1995
© Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency, 2025
