Note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died, used with the permission of their family. 

“One of the world’s leading artists”: That is how the Tate Modern Gallery in London describes the late Emily Kam Kngwarray, at the entrance to a new exhibition of her work.

The Aboriginal woman from Alhalker country, in the Central Desert Sandover region of the Northern Territory, has become the first Australian to have a solo exhibition at the world-famous contemporary art gallery in London, in a showcase of her work that opened last month. 

A portrait of artist Emily Kam Kngwarray kneeling on Country wearing a white shirt and head scarf

Emily Kam Kngwarray near Mparntwe (Alice Springs) after the first exhibition of her Utopia batiks in 1980. (Supplied: NGA)

Comprising four of the largest rooms in the former power plant that houses the Tate Modern, the exhibition is a retrospective of all of Kngwarray’s major works — from her early batiks in the 1970s, through to her brightly coloured flora and fauna of her country in the late 1980s and 1990s.

A collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), it marks the first large-scale presentation of Kngwarray’s work ever held in a European country. 

Kelli Cole, of the National Gallery of Australia, is a Warumunga and Luritja woman who curated the exhibition at the Tate Modern.

Ms Cole said the exhibition had been a long time coming.

“Nearly four years we have worked on this — me and the community,” she said. 

A woman with white-complexion, gray short curly hair, wearing white blazer, which has faint black lines through it.

Kelli Cole is the curator behind the Tate Modern exhibition of Emily Kam Kngwarray’s work. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)

She described the exhibition as “significant” for making Kngwarray the first Australian artist to have her own show at the Tate Modern — one of the world’s most prestigious art galleries, alongside the Louvre in Paris and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Having her at the Tate Modern in London is an absolute honour,” she said.

“She is hanging on the walls where Picasso, Rothko and other European artists hang — artists that were extraordinary, who have stood the test of time. And there we have Emily’s paintings hanging on these walls.”A remarkable career

There is an almost palpable sense of pride as sisters Judy Kngwarreye Purvis, Jedda Maureen Kngwarreye and Maureen Kngwarreye Purvis stand before one of their grandmother’s paintings in the archives of the Arunta Art Gallery in Alice Springs. 

A close up shot of an Aboriginal woman, short-cut hair, grey jacket on with bold red-framed glasses on.

Maureen Kngwarreye Purvis is the granddaughter of Emily Kam Kngwarray. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)

There is a feeling of reverence as Judy Kngwarreye Purvis’s hand gently hovers over the large multi-coloured canvas. “It is our land,” she half-whispers.

There is a pause, then Jedda Maureen Kngwarreye says: “She is famous. We are really happy.”

The sisters are talking about their memories of working with the renowned artist at the time she painted Emu Woman — the first artwork a spectator sees when they enter the Tate Modern exhibition. 

A multi-pattern Aboriginal panting on display in frame, on white wall. Brown, ochre, beige colours, black dots.

Emily Kam Kngwarray’s artwork Emu Woman on show at the Tate Modern. (ABC News: Matthew Qvortrup)

Judy Kngwarreye Purvis draws a ring with her hands to show how they sat in a circle around their grandmother, and all three smile as they remember the occasion. 

Born in Alhalker around 1910, Kngwarray worked on cattle stations looking after white settlers’ children for the first 60 years of her life.

Understanding Emily Kam Kngwarray

She is one of Australia’s most celebrated and collected artists, but her identity and her art have long been misunderstood.

Late in life, in 1977, she attended a short course in batik in the Utopia region of the Northern Territory, and went on to set up local arts collective The Utopia Women’s Batik Group.

In 1988, she was introduced to acrylic painting.

Kngwarray later said that change in her art was borne out of necessity.

“My eyesight deteriorated as I got older, and because of that I gave up batik on silk — it was better for me to just paint,” she said in an interview with an art historian before her death in 1996.

Towards the end of her life she also practised body painting, or awelye, a practice Aboriginal people have engaged in for millennia.

Kngwarray’s acrylic paintings often depict native flora and fauna, especially anwelarr, or pencil yam — a native vine.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

An artwork by Emily Kam Kngwarray that was part of an auction of Aboriginal art in London in 2015. (Supplied: Sotheby’s)

Kngwarreye’s granddaughters explain how the idea of country connects with ancient myths of creation, saying it “represents the lands, skies and waters that have been part of [their] lives over countless generations”.

While to the uninitiated outsider, Kngwarray’s paintings may look abstract, Ms Cole said that was not the case.

“When you talk about abstract, people don’t understand Aboriginal art, so they have to put it in the Western canon,” she said.

“Her paintings aren’t abstractions, they are paintings of country.”A multi-coloured pattern wall of Aboriginal art, with the words 'Emily Kam Kngwarray' displayed over it in white font.

The entrance to the new Emily Kam Kngwarray exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. (ABC News: Matthew Qvortrup)

One of Australia’s leading artists

Kngwarray was a prolific artist. It is estimated she produced more than 3,000 paintings throughout her commercial art career, which lasted only the last eight years of her life.

That’s roughly 1,000 more works than Vincent Van Gogh painted in his final decade.

Today, Kngwarray’s paintings sell for astronomical sums. In 2007 her painting Earth’s Creation 1 sold for the highest price ever paid at the time for an artwork by an Australian Aboriginal artist, fetching more than $1,056,000.

A decade later, it sold again for an even higher price of $2.1 million.

Earth's Creation, by Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Earth’s Creation 1, by Emily Kam Kngwarray, sold for auction at a record $2.1 million in 2017.

  (Courtesy the Artist)

Kngwarray’s artworks have been promoted by celebrities, including the likes of Oprah Winfrey. 

But to her relatives she was not just a superstar, but a grandmother who shared her stories and her techniques.

All three of her granddaughters have since followed in her footsteps by becoming artists themselves, and reflect on how their grandmother taught them all to paint. 

Emily Kngwarreye paints Earth's Creation

Emily Kam Kngwarray painting her famous artwork Earth’s Creation 1. (Supplied)

“We were watching as she was doing her painting. She was telling her stories,” Maureen Kngwarray Purvis said.

“She said to us, ‘Next time, you mob are gonna do the same as me’.”

The Emily Kam Kngwarray exhibition at the Tate Modern opened in August and runs until January 11 next year.