MA ART 375 EKK Lesson PPT FV

ART 375 Cultures Lesson Final Version - Lab Teacher: M. A. Date: 5/6/2015; Rvsd. 4/15/2017 (This version of lesson PPT produced with assistance from Prof. J. Childress, The College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY) Students will learn about the culture of the Utopia community of Australian Aboriginal people, and the importance and origins of their art. We will focus on the work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye and specifically, Big Yam Dreaming. The students will explore big ideas such as Nature/Life Cycles and Culture as they construct their own interpretation of imagery of cracked earth. The students will split into small groups and collaborate on a large scale painting inspired by the mark-making techniques of Kngwarreye. The students will need to work intuitively as they develop an organic, wandering line composition, similar to the process Kngwarreye used. “That she knew virtually nothing of the art world beyond Utopia and drew her energy, creativity and inspiration from a small patch of country in the centre of the Australian outback is just one of the many radical challenges her art poses.” Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, National Museum of Australia Her name itself Kam[e], comes from the seeds and flowers of the pencil yam plant. Jenny Green, linguist Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Yam, National Museum of Australia Exhibit Artist and/or Culture “Emily” Kwementyay Kame Kngwarreye, Australian Aborigine Date 1995 Medium/Form Synthetic polymer paint on canvas Approximate Size 2.9 meters x 8 meters (multiple canvas panels joined together as one) Function/Purpose To represent part of an important cultural legend or Dreaming in Alhalkere country Intended Audience Museum and Gallery visitors The magnificent scale of the artwork overwhelms viewers, enveloping and immersing them in the painting’s mesmerizing visual field. Visitors at the exhibition at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, 26 February to 13 April 2008. Photo: Benita Tunks. National Museum of Australia exhibit, Utopia: The genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye Image: http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/utopia_the_genius_of_emily_kame_kngwarreye/photos_from_osaka?result_6095_result_page=2#slideshow-gallery Rationale for the importance of this artwork as subject for study: 1. Emily Kame Kngwarreye was a very successful artist who was represented by museums and galleries worldwide, and is considered a genius as she was self-taught. 2. Big Yam Dreaming is an energetic painting with a strong modernist or contemporary feel, though completely developed without any reference to Western artforms. It has complex formal elements including a build up of space through density of line, a cohesive flow and sense of movement, and overall compositional balance. 3. The intuitive process the artist used in making this painting is admirable and fresh. Aboriginals see themselves as part of nature. We see all things natural as part of us. All the things on Earth we see as part human. This is told through the ideas of dreaming. By dreaming we mean the belief that long ago, these creatures started human society. These creatures, these great creatures are just as much alive today as they were in the beginning. They are everlasting and will never die. They are always part of the land and nature as we are. Our connection to all things natural is spiritual. Silas Roberts, first Chairman of the Northern Land Council Land and Cultures: Dreaming and the Dreamtime …Dreaming is not a time that has merely passed but coexists with reality. It is an existence and sustains life, bestowing energy to all plants, animals and humans[23]. Aboriginal spirituality is centred on the life force and through the commemorative rituals, the people are able to generate it and cultivate it[24]. Nkd_Libby Aboriginal Dreamtime stories (or Dreamings) are myths orally passed down from generation to generation about the creation of life from ancestral beings who sculpted the Earth through battles and ceremonies. From Land and Cultures: Dreaming and the Dreamtime “The Dreaming is a term used by Aborigines to describe the relations and balance between the spiritual, natural and moral elements of the world. It is an English word but its meaning goes beyond any suggestion of a spiritual or dream-related state. Rather, the Dreaming relates to a period from the origin of the universe to a time before living memory or experience - a time of creator ancestors and supernatural beings. This time is also called the Dreamtime… These creator ancestors formed the features of the land and all living things and also set down the laws for social and moral order. The Dreaming, as well as answering questions about origins, provides a harmonious framework for human experience in the universe - and the place of all living things within it. Each Aboriginal person's totem and Dreaming is determined by the place in the landscape where the mother feels her first signs of being pregnant... The ancestral beings also left a record of themselves and their actions in the form of a rich variety of art. During their epic journeys, the ancestral beings sang and performed ceremonies, made engravings or paintings on rock and in caves and left sacred objects. In northern Australia, these songs are handed from generation to generation, together with the body designs that were first painted on the chests of the ancestral beings… Aboriginal peoples living in different parts of Australia trace their origins directly from these great ancestral beings. When present-day Aboriginal people walk through their country, they are continually reminded of the presence of the creator beings. This happens not only through the features of the landscape but also through songs, paintings and ceremonies… Many artworks are visual representations of the symbols associated with the artist's dreaming. Emily Kame Kngwarreye is one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. Emily was born at the beginning of the twentieth century and grew up in a remote desert area known as Utopia, 230 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, distant from the art world that sought her work. Although Emily began to paint late in her life she was a prolific artist who often worked at a pace that belied her advanced age. It is estimated that she produced over 3000 paintings in the course of her eight-year painting career — an average of one painting per day. For virtually two-thirds of her life she had only sporadic contact with the outside world. It was not until she was about 80 that she became, almost overnight, an artist of national and international standing. Her remarkable work was inspired by her cultural life as an Anmatyerre elder, and her lifelong custodianship of the women’s Dreaming sites in her clan Country, Alhalkere. Emily Kame Kngwarreye. From: Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, National Museum of Australia Exhibit Photo: Greg Weight, 1994. After decades of mark-making on the body and in the sand, Emily’s cultural narratives found expression in the batik medium from 1977 to 1988, followed by painting on canvas until the end of her life, eight years later. Over the summer of 1988–89, she painted Emu Woman, her first work on canvas, which caused an overnight sensation in the art world. Visual links connecting these batiks with her later canvases include linear patterns related to body markings, plant and animal forms, the under- tracking of the root systems of plants, the interplay of dots and the overall patterning. By 1990 her use of pictographic elements, such as animal and plant forms, that inhabit these busy surfaces was rapidly reduced to fields of dots. Emily’s batiks are a transition between body painting and painting on canvas. They are exhibited here on boards rather than draped, as textiles are usually shown, to discourage a view of them as craft. For Emily, the material upon which marks are made is immaterial. Whether the surface is Alhalkere, Batik application on cotton, 86 x 89 cm sand, silk, skin or canvas, it is the cultural power of the mark and its Image: http://www.artrecord.com/index.cfm/artist/3479-kngwarreye- reference to her Country of Alhalkere with its ancestral connections that emily-kame/medium/5-objects/# remain paramount. Cont’d next slide Emu Woman 1988–89 This work is acclaimed as Emily’s first painting on canvas. As part of the first community-wide painting project conducted at For a full chronology, link to http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/utopia_the_genius_of_emily_kam Utopia, the Alice Springs-based Central Australian Aboriginal e_kngwarreye/emily_kame_kngwarreye Media Association (CAAMA) delivered 100 blank canvases and paint to Utopia in late 1988. A few weeks later, 81 completed canvases were collected. Among these was Emu Woman. It caused instant excitement in the art world and was acquired for the Robert Holmes à Court collection. Its innovative exploration of ‘dotting’ heralded a profound departure from the so-called ‘dot and circle’ style of the then male-dominated desert art movement. Freed from the restrictive medium of batik, Emily discovered that painting enabled her naturally expansive and gestural style to flourish. Plants and seeds referred to in this work belong to Emily’s Dreaming, which she kept alive in her paintings and through song and dance. This work shows designs that mimic the lines and contours of body painting and the marks made on women’s breasts for ceremony, enacted in homage to the Emu Emu Woman 1988–89 ancestor. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 92.0 x 61.0cm. The Holmes à Court Collection, Heytesbury. From: Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Origins, National Museum © Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Licensed Viscopy 08. of Australia Exhibit Awelye body painting, Utopia Lane Gallery Image: https://www.utopialaneart.com.au/collections /awelye-womens-ceremony-and-body-paint- designs Untitled (Awelye); Emily Kame Kngwarrey, 1994 Aboriginal dancer Russell Page performing in front of a painting by Emily Kame Kngwarreye at an exhibition of Aboriginal art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia.

Load more