Kathleen Ngale

DOB: c. 1933
Born: UTOPIA, NORTHERN TERRITORY
LANGUAGE ANMATYERRE
SKIN NAME NGALE

About Artist:
Kathleen began her art career in the late 1970s in the medium of batik with over eighty other women from the Utopia Region in Central Australia. Her work in batik is featured in Utopia A Picture Story.

When the acrylics on canvas movement swept Utopia in the late 1980s, Kathleen like the other women swiftly changed mediums. Kathleen's popularity as an artist grew in the early 00s, for her simplistic "Bush Plum" paintings. Her work has been exhibited around the globe and is also featured frequently in Aboriginal Art Auctions. Kathleen loves to paint and talk about her work. Though she does not speak much English, she continues to try and teach the wider world about her paintings and the Anwekety that features in them.

Kathleen refers to the Anwekety as Bush Plum, which in fact are small black conkerberries that grow on the plant after good rain. Living with her sisters and extended family in the Utopia Region, Kathleen is encouraged by and passes her enthusiasm onto them. Artists Polly Ngale, Gladys Kemarre and Angelina Pwerle are just a few family members to name.

Exhibitions:
2000 Urapunja artists in Brisbane, Micheal Sourgnes
2000 Out of the Desert, Desert Gallery, Sydney
2001 Utopia a Special Painting Place, Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania
2001 Desert Mob, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory
2001 Bush Plum Dreaming, Indigenart, Perth, Western Australia
2002 Two sisters, Kathleen and Polly, Lorraine Diggins, Melbourne
2002 Australian Modern, Fondazione Mudima, Milan, Italy
2004 Desert Mob, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory
2006 Lorraine Diggins exhibition, London
2006 Senior Women of Utopia, GalleryG, Brisbane
2007 Patterns of Power, art from the Eastern Desert, Simmer on the Bay Gallery, Sydney
2010 Spring, Kate Owen Gallery

Awards:
2000 Finalist National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award