The Art of the ‘Dreaming’
- anne
- Aug 15, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 11, 2025
As soon as you enter the gallery space, you feel the connection between Emily Kam Kngwarray’s work and her Country - a concept that is central to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and has a complex meaning, way beyond the notion of ‘nationhood'. It’s more than the land, water and all living beings, it encompasses a sense of identity, community and belonging that is deeply spiritual and connected to the ancestors, going right back to the Dreaming - the time when it all began, tens of thousands of years ago.
The Dreamings - ancestral beings - are fundamental to social, cultural and spiritual practices and manifest themselves in Country and all its different life forms - varying according to region. As custodians of Dreamtime stories, Aboriginal people’s have a responsibility to pass them on through ceremony, ritual, song and dance, to preserve and protect the land and its sacred sites for future generations - a feature that is common amongst indigenous peoples - and that sets them apart from our throw away capitalist, extractivist system.
As you progress through the different rooms, you can feel how much of that richness and energy are embodied in the batiks and paintings around you …
Emily Kam Kngwarray (ca. 1914–96) was born in Alhalker Country, some 250 kilometres northeast of Alice Spring, in the Northern Territory - her Country, and they are so closely intertwined that it is difficult to tell them apart. Known to her family by her middle name Kam - the seed and seedpods of the anwerlarr (pencil) yam, a key component in the spirituality of the landscape and ancestors, as well as a precious source of food and survival. She spoke Anmatyerr - one of the many languages from the area’s desert region.
Then, in the 1920’s, the white settler colonialists moved in. They took over the land, an amalgamation of five Countries covering 2,000 square kilometres, adjoining Alhalker, and renamed it ‘Utopia’. They used this land, so meaningful to Indigenous people, for cattle stations, with a devastating impact. Forced from their land and ceremonial sites by settlers, Aboriginal people were pushed into small areas and forced into slave labour - the men as stockmen and the women as domestic servants, receiving only meagre food rations and old clothing in lieu of payment. Things began to change, albeit slowly, following the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, 1976, that allowed the Traditional Owners to reclaim their land.
Sand and body paintings are intrinsic to Aboriginal culture - they are representations of the Dreamings that are celebrated in ceremonies. Emily Kam Kngwarray, as a woman elder and ancestral custodian of the Anmatyerr people, painted these for ceremonial purposes and they became the basis for her work.
She came to art quite late in life, after joining the Utopia Women’s Batik Group, in the late 1970s. Batik, which originates from Indonesia, became a popular art from for women, who were rarely permitted to paint their own canvas, as well as a lucrative project. Besides, the sale of early Batik artworks was lucrative and helped raise funds to assist the Anmatyerr and Alyawarr people's successfully claim the freehold title of the Utopia Pastoral Lease in 1979.
Talking about her work, she describes what she paints:
“…Whole lot, that’s whole lot,
Awely (my dreaming), Arlatyey (pencil yam),
Arkerrth (mountain devil lizard), Ntang (grass seed),
Tingu (a dream-time pup), Ankerr (emu),
Intekw (a favourite food of emus, a small plant),
Atnwerl (green bean), and Kam (yam seed).
That’s what I paint: whole lot.…”
Emily Kam Kngwarray’s vibrant style evolved over time from more organic forms, direct references to the desert ecosystem, Dreamings and dotted scapes that look like aerial views of her Country to the minimalist compositions that defined her later work. In 1988, she seamlessly shifted from Batik to acrylic on canvas, creating an extraordinary body of work, totally 3,000 paintings, and became one of Australia’s most critically acclaimed contemporary artists.
The Tate Modern retrospective, the first major solo exhibition of her work in Europe, runs until 11 January 2026 and features 70 pieces—from her early batik designs and her first canvas in 1988 to her final works in 1996. Do not miss it.
Leigh Bowery - Queen of the Urban Jungle (this exhibition has ended)
Also on the third floor at Tate Modern is a different cultural experience altogether - and you can’t miss it! The glittery wall with his name shimmering in sliver, green and purple announce the wonderful world of Leigh Bowery.
While there is an Australia link, the Leigh Bowery exhibition bears no comparison to Emily Kam Kngwarray’s spiritual Dreamtime journey. But what it does do is present, is an insight into the life, times and imagination of a larger than life, über-exhuberant agent provocateur. Room after room will take you through an explosion of lights, costumes, colours, screenings, a defiance of the norms and queerness that are unique and so highly refreshing.
Go see it - it’s fun, cheeky and mesmerising. Aspects of it are also deeply earnest - lest we forget the devastation of 1980’s HIV pandemic and a societal context rife with anti-LGBTQ+, racist, and anti-immigration beliefs … sound familiar?
Exhibition ends on 31st August 2025.
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