AWELYE
The  legacy of utopia 

The region of Utopia, some 290km north-east of Alice Springs, is well-known for its contemporary art movement. Home of Alyawarre and Anmatyerre people, an art practice began at Utopia in the 1970s in the medium of batik, before moving into painting at the end of the 1980s.

The Eastern Anmatyerre artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996), now often referred to as ‘the most famous Australian artist in the world’, was a groundbreaking artist and has been the subject of several major public gallery retrospective exhibitions, including a record-breaking exhibition in Japan, now as the first Australian Indigenous artist to hold a solo retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. She also holds the position as the highest-priced Australian woman artist of all time.

Kngwarreye’s Country was Alhalkere, and one of her main subjects was Awelye, which she called ‘my Dreaming’. Awelye can be translated as ‘women’s ceremony’, but it is a multifaceted concept. It has been called ‘performance-based knowledge’ by anthropologists, and encompasses music, song, dance, ritual objects, ground painting and body painting designs done in ceremony, storytelling, knowledge, education, entertainment, maintenance of Country, artistic expression and expression of family and personal relations. Awelye is a core fundamental practice of these societies, transmitting the deep knowledge, spiritual practice and community customs of the past into the present and future generations.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) describes the layered meanings of Kngwarreye’s Awelye works in their collection, noting that ‘the marks Kngwarreye has made on the canvas mirror the physical expression of Awelye, where body paint is painted onto the skin for ceremonial purposes. This expression releases the spiritual power that maintains nature’s fertility and hardiness.’ The MCA notes of these works of Kngwarreye’s that, 'Awelye also has a broader meaning that describes the range of content of a ceremony and a body of knowledge. Thus these simple lines are much more than just stylised body paint. In fact, there are many other references, including the lines left behind in the sand and cuts made in the upper arm, as a sign of sorrow after a death.’

The subject of Awelye continued on from Kngwarreye, maintaining its role as central to the Utopia art movement. The Anmatyerre and Alyawarre artist Barbara Weir (c.1945-2023), who was cared for by Kngwarreye as a child and was incredibly close to her as an adult, continued the subject in her works, as does her daughter Charmaine Pwerle (b.1975), who paints her grandmother Minnie Pwerle’s (c.1915-2006) inherited Awelye designs of their Atnwengerrp Country.

Both Minnie Pwerle and Charmaine Pwerle’s works depict their Dreaming: Anemangkerr, a small globular fruit that Minnie Pwerle described as being ‘a little melon’. An important native food source rich in Vitamin C, for which they are custodians, it is painted as a small circular design, symbolising its seeds. These are blended with large circular images representing ceremonial sites, and a linear design representing the tracks used when searching for food. Curvilinear shapes depict the literal Awelye women’s ceremonial body-paint design of the Pwerle clanswomen.

Minnie Pwerle’s sister Emily Pwerle (b.c 1930s) paints ʻAwelye Atnwengerrpʼ, that she says refer particularly to the women’s body paint designs of bush tucker ceremonies, in a series of lines and symbols, often criss-crossed patterns, that are layered across the canvas in colours that are explosive and energetic.

Minnie and Emily Pwerle’s cousin Lizzie Moss Pwerle (b.c 1940s) is also a foundational Alyawarre artist from Atnwengerrp. Her intricate, often monochromatic works use incredibly fine dots to portray the movement of Awelye, with linear design indicating the lines that the women make in the red sand when they dance their stories that belong to Atnwengerrp Country.

NEW GENERATIONS

The legacy of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Country Alhalkere is continued in the work of new generation artists Janet Golder Kngwarreye (b.1973) and Belinda Golder Kngwarreye (b.1988), who are the granddaughters of Kngwarreye’s cousin, Utopia founding artist Polly Ngale (c.1936-2022) and artist Kudditji Kngwarreye (1938-2017). Belinda Golder continues Ngale's beautiful Bush Plum Dreaming, reminiscent of Ngale and Kngwarreye’s signature Alhalkere style painted with a heavily-loaded, large paint brush to create densely layered, richly coloured work, drawing on the crushed wildflowers and ochres used in ground painting for Awelye ceremonies. Differing palettes ranging from deep and moody to joyous pinks and yellows reflect the seasonal changes of the landscape, with the heat and drying out of the land, to the advent of rain and the subsequent blooming of the bush plum flower.

Like Kngwarreye, they are custodians of the bush yam, although their work also can reflect their generation of the contemporary age with their own styles. Often depicting women's ancestral stories in iconography of geographic elements within the landscape, with rock holes, underground springs, mountain and rock formations, and sacred sites, these works are meticulously recorded from memory shown in an aerial perspective.

Janet Golder Kngwarreye's works feature the women's sites on Alhalkere country while a new series of abstract colour field works, like those of her grandfather Kudditji Kngwarreye, represent her interpretations of the Country itself.

From the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre artists we expand out into Eastern Arrernte and Alyawarr artist Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye (b.1966), Eastern Arrernte artist Colleen Wallace Nungarrayi (b.1974) and Arrernte artist Bernadine Johnson Kemarre (b.1974).

Caroline Petrick Ngwarreye’s Country lies at Irrerlirre, approximately 250km north east of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in the beautiful Harts Range. Developed under the tutelage of her artist mother Jill Kelly Kemarre, her subtle paintings consist of intricate patterns of dot work and splashes of colour relating to her mother’s Country, with Awelye relating to arnwekety (conkerberry) and ntange (seeds).

Colleen Wallace Nungarrayi’s work is directly identifiable as depicting Awelye. Showing the connection between women’s and men’s cultural practice, her subject is drawn from her grandfather, artist Kenny Tilmouth Penangke’s Dreaming, ‘Irrernte-arenye’ (Dreamtime Sisters) Dreaming. Protective, benevolent spirits of important areas of land, such as sacred or ceremonial sites, these ancestral spirits dance Awelye, the women’s ceremony.

Whilst originally from Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa), east of Alice Springs, Bernadine Kemarre moved to Utopia to marry Stephen Pitjarra, brother of well-known artist Anna Price Petyarre. Her work follows the tradition of Utopia artist Gloria Petyarre, whose paintings depicted bush medicine leaves, bush tucker and other plants of her lands, important women’s stories told, sung, danced and painted in Awelye.

AWELYE TODAY

Whilst still practised today, the fundamental practice of Awelye is under threat, with many young people living off Country in cities and towns, and the advent of television, radio and the internet replacing traditional entertainment. In their work, these generations of artists are maintaining and communicating their Awelye knowledge, as a crucial and fundamental practice of sharing, education, expression and maintenance.

Emily McCulloch Childs, November 2025