Kathleen Ngale (alternative spellings include Kngale, Kngala, Kngal, Ngala etc.) is a senior

Australian Aboriginal Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia (co ...

artist, born 1930 in the

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', which describes a fictiona ...

region of

Central Australia Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and ...

. She died in 2021. Kathleen Ngale belongs to the oldest-living generation of Utopia artists and has been compared to

Emily Kngwarreye Emily Kam Kngwarray (c.1914-1996) was born in her Ancestral lands, Alhalker located in the Sandover region of the Northern Territory, Australia. One of the world’s most significant contemporary painters to emerge in the twentieth century Kngw ...

Minnie Pwerle Minnie Pwerle (also Minnie Purla or Minnie Motorcar Apwerl; born between 1910 and 1922 – 18 March 2006) was an Australian Aboriginal artist. She came from Utopia, Northern Territory (''Unupurna'' in local language), a cattle station in the ...

and

Kathleen Petyarre Kathleen Petyarre (born Kweyetwemp Petyarre; c. 1940 – 24 November 2018, Alice Springs) was an Australian Aboriginal artist. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings. Petyarre's paintings have occasionally been compared to t ...

Life

Kathleen Ngale was born around 1930 at the Camel Camp Station, 250 km north-east of

Alice Springs Alice Springs () is a town in the Northern Territory, Australia; it is the third-largest settlement after Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin and Palmerston, Northern Territory, Palmerston. The name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William ...

, where she still lives with her extended family. She started working in

Batik Batik is a dyeing technique using wax Resist dyeing, resist. The term is also used to describe patterned textiles created with that technique. Batik is made by drawing or stamping wax on a cloth to prevent colour absorption during the dyein ...

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 Polly Ngale and Angelina Pwerle Ngale are also 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.

Sasha Grishin Alexander "Sasha" Dmitrievich Grishin is an Australian art historian, art critic and curator based in Victoria and Canberra. He is known as an art critic, and for establishing the academic discipline of art history at the Australian National Un ...

, Sir William Dobell Professor of Art History at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

, 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 c. 1940) have become sought after in recent years.

Selected exhibitions

*1992 Modern Art-Ancient Icon – The World Bank, Washington, US *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 *2002 Two sisters, Kathleen and Polly, Lorraine Diggins, Melbourne *2002 Australian Modern, Fondazione Mudima, Milan, Italy *2004-2006 ArtParis International Contemporary Art Fair, Grand Palais, Paris *2005 October Gallery, London *2006 Galerie Clément, Vevey, Switzerland *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 *2008 Emily Kngwarreye and Her Legacy, Tokyo, Japan *2008 Galerie Brenart, 221 Avenue Louise, Bruxelles (Brussels), Belgium *2014 Visions of Utopia, Mitchell Fine Art, Brisbane *2017 Desert Dots II, Utopia Lane Gallery, Melbourne *2018 Beyond the Veil, Olsen Gruin Gallery, New York

Selected collections

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and list of most visited art museums in the world, most visited art mu ...

, Melbourne *Thomas Vroom Collection, Utrecht, the Netherlands *Holmas a Court Collection, Perth

Notes

References

*http://www.aboriginal-art.com/desert_pages/utopia_thumb_12.html *http://collection-ben.blogspot.com/2008/02/visite-bruxelles-de-lexpo-les-grands.html *http://www.metrogallery.com.au/artists/artist/35/Kathleen%20Kngale/ *Kreczmanski, Janusz B & Birnberg, Margo (eds.): Aboriginal Artists: Dictionary of Biographies: Central Desert, Western Desert & Kimberley Region (JB Publishing Australia, Marleston, 2004) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ngale, Kathleen 1930s births Living people Australian Aboriginal artists 20th-century Australian painters 21st-century Australian painters Artists from the Northern Territory 20th-century Australian women painters 21st-century Australian women painters Year of birth missing (living people)