Kathleen Ngale (alternative spellings include Kngale, Kngala, Kngal, Ngala etc.) is a senior Australian Aboriginal artist, born ca. 1930 in the Utopia region of Central Australia. Kathleen Ngale belongs to the oldest living generation of Utopia artists and has in the last two decades emerged as one of the greatest Aboriginal artists, having been compared to such eminent figures as Emily Kngwarreye, Minnie Pwerle or Kathleen Petyarre, due both to her senior status and the uncommon quality of her work.
Life
Kathleen Ngale was born around 1930 at the Camel Camp Station, 250 km north-East of Alice Springs, where she still lives with her extended family. She started working in Batik in 1979 and pursued her work in that medium until she, along with many other Aboriginal artists, was introduced in the late 1980s to painting in acrylic colours on canvas. Her work since then has come to be seen as some of the most sophisticated and complex in the Aboriginal art scene. She has been featured in many exhibitions, both in Australia and overseas, and she was a finalist in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award in both 2000 and 2008. Kathleen Ngale is now the senior custodian of the cultural knowledge of her country, Arlparra. Her younger sisters and are also accomplished artists.
Work
Kathleen Ngale's works are a depiction of her country, Arlparre, and its 'Bush Plum' (anwekety) Dreaming. Her paintings are made up of numerous layers of superimposed dots, creating a feeling of depth, light and movement. There is virtually as much hidden in these works as there is visible in a surface reading, with many underdotting colour planes shimmering through the top layers in a highly complex interplay. Her subtly dotted underpainting often consists of yellows, reds, purples, greens, over which she then often applies a thick layer of overdotting which almost obscures the underdotting altogether or fuses with it to create a surface of delicate, fragile colour softer than the original underdotting, red and white often fusing into a translucent, fleshy white/pink. The colour is often thickly applied or washed out, but then in the surface of the same canvas the overdotting can in some parts become very sparse, allowing the viewer to see down through the painting's surface into a field of deep or 'negative' space. , Sir William Dobell Professor of Art History at the Australian National University, wrote in 2009: "Although Kathleen Kngale has been painting for over two decades , it is only in recent years that she has been acclaimed as one of the most significant and exciting artists in contemporary Utopia painting, creating memorable and visually dazzling paintings... She is an artist who has created an unique and distinctive stylistic language, one of great visual power and spiritual resonance."
Her works (as well as those of her sister Polly, born ca. 1940) have become sought after in recent years.
Selected Exhibitions
Selected Collections
Notes
References
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