KUDDITJI KNGWARREYE

This on-line exhibition presents a selection of the Kate Owen Gallery's collection of works by the extraordinary painter, Kudditji Kngwarreye, brother of Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

For more information about the artist and his work, please visit the Kudditji section on this website, where you will find more artwork and a detailed biography.

This is a presentation of a selection of works by the extraordinary painter, Kudditji Kngwarreye, brother of Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Born around 1928, Kudditji Kngwarreye, the younger half-brother of the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, had a traditional bush upbringing in the Utopia region before starting a long career as a stockman and mine worker. An Anmatyerre elder and custodian of many important Dreamings, Kudditji was inspired by the work coming out of Papunya to paint his own Dreamings, telling of the travels and law of the Emu ancestors.

Starting in 1986, his precisely dotted Emu Dreaming paintings, featuring ranks of coloured roundels and other 'hieroglyphs' on a chequered or dotted background, became sought after by major galleries in the Northern Territory. Breaking out of this style after some years, Kudditji's work became far looser and more 'abstract', and some commentators have seen a strong similarity with his sister Emily's work - but it is not clear who was the first to set out on this path. The demand for his earlier, detailed style, however, moved Kudditji to return to it, and it was only in 2003 that he began to exhibit the extraordinary, saturated colour paintings that have seen his reputation grow nationally and internationally.

Kudditji is represented in major international collections. His two dimensional spatial constructions seem to refer to Rothko and modernists of the twentieth century. The paintings are documents of an intuitive interplay between artist and the space of a canvas.

WE SPECIALISE IN PAINTINGS BY KUDDITJI KNGWARREYE. PLEASE CALL FOR FURTHER INFORMATION OR IMAGES OR TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT TO VIEW THE WORKS.

For more information about the artist and his work, please visit the Kudditji section on this website, where you will find more artwork and a detailed biography.