Angelina Pwerle (pronounced 'Pull-uh') is an

Australian Indigenous Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples o ...

artist, born c. 1946 in the

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...

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 i ...

. Her work is held by the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

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 ...

and other institutions.

Work

Angelina Pwerle began working with batik in 1986 as part of the Utopia Women’s Batik Group, alongside

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Emily Kame Kngwarreye (or Emily Kam Ngwarray) (1910 – 3 September 1996) was an Aboriginal Australian artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. She is one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of Austr ...

and others. She took up the medium of acrylic paint on canvas in the Australian summer of 1988-9. The work she has produced since 1989 can be divided into three main styles: abstract, naive and ritual. Her abstract paintings are composed of numerous tiny dots and can be described as

pointillist Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...

works. Her naive paintings depict the Atham-areny spirit people. Her ritual work consists of woodcarvings that reflect her deep knowledge of ceremony. Pwerle's first solo exhibition took place at

Niagara Galleries Niagara Galleries shows contemporary and Modernist Australian art in Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne, from a terrace which has been substantially remodelled in a postmodern style. History The gallery was established by Kyneton High Sch ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

in 1996. She continues to exhibit with the gallery, most recently with the show ''Bush Plum and Beyond'' in 2021. She has also painted for Delmore Gallery since 1989. Pwerle's work appeared in

Hosfelt Gallery Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, California was founded in 1996 by Todd Hosfelt to exhibit contemporary international artists working in all media. History Hosfelt Gallery was founded by Todd Hosfelt in 1996, at 95 Federal Street in San Francisco, ...

's 20th Anniversary Exhibition in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

alongside works by

Jean-Michel Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al ...

and

Ed Ruscha Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography and film. He is also noted for creating severa ...

. She has also been the subject of solo shows at Hosfelt Gallery in 2013 and 2018. Pwerle is the subject of the 2012 documentary film ''Bush Plum: The Contemporary Art of Angelina Pwerle''. Her work was featured in the exhibition ''Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia'', which toured the United States and Canada in 2016–2019. In the book published alongside the exhibition, former

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...

curator Anne Marie Brody writes: " werle'sworks are, like the late masterpieces of

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

, deep crystallizations at the far frontier of creative endeavor."

Bush Plum paintings

Pwerle's best-known works are a depiction of her country's ''Bush Plum'' (anwekety) Dreaming. These canvases characteristically feature an intense concentration of tiny dots which produce the effect of movement or shadows across the surface. Pwerle uses a wooden skewer to make these minuscule marks on the surface of her canvases. In 2022,

director Nick Mitzevich told the ''Financial Times'': "The way her practice has developed is extraordinary. She has refined the Central Desert dotting technique and used it to create abstract visions that are quite distinct from those made by her contemporaries." Writing in ''The Monthly'', Patrick Witton describes a ''Bush Plum'' composition as “a constellation of minute dots that cluster and crack forth across the canvas, capturing at once the granular and the expansive.” Pwerle herself describes her practice as "a constant engagement" and "a spiritual connection to place."

Works in major collections

Institutions that hold two or more works by Pwerle include: * Metropolitan Museum of Art * National Gallery of Australia * Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco * National Gallery of Victoria * Art Gallery of New South Wales * Art Gallery of South Australia

Personal life

Pwerle speaks only her native Anmatyerre and rarely leaves the Utopia region. She is also sometimes known by the first name Angeline and the surnames Ngal, Ngale and Kngale. There is some dispute amongst Australian art dealers about which names are correct. However, most institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia and

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

, now refer to her as Angelina Pwerle. Speaking to ''Art Monthly Australasia'' in 2016, Pwerle herself explained: "Pwerle is the same as Ngale, just in another language." In

Alyawarr The Alyawarre, also spelt Alyawarr and also known as the Iliaura, are an Aboriginal Australian people, or language group, from the Northern Territory. The Alyawarre are made up of roughly 1,200 associated peoples and actively engage in local tra ...

country, Angelina is referred to as Pwerle, and in

Anmatyerre The Anmatyerr, also spelt Anmatyerre, Anmatjera, Anmatjirra, Amatjere and other variations) are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory, who speak one of the Upper Arrernte languages. Language Anmatyerr is divided into Easte ...

country she is referred to as Ngale. She is the younger sister of artists Kathleen Ngale and Polly Ngale.

External links

Angelina Pwerle Archive

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pwerle, Angelina Australian Aboriginal artists Australian women painters 20th-century Australian women artists 21st-century Australian women artists Artists from the Northern Territory 1940s births Living people Year of birth uncertain