Born: c.1956-2024, Utopia, Northern Territory
Language: Alyawarre
Known as: Gracie Morton Pwerl, Gracie Pwerle Morton, Gracie Pwerl Morton, Gracie Purle Morton, Gracie Morton
Dreamings: Bush Plum (Anwekety, also written Arnwekety, the conkerberry), Women's Dreaming (Awelye), Country
Gracie Morton Pwerle was born around 1956 at Utopia, roughly 250 kilometres north east of Alice Springs, and she lived there all her life. She was the daughter of the senior artist Myrtle Petyarre, one of the seven sisters known throughout the art world as the Petyarre sisters, so Gloria, Kathleen, Ada Bird, Violet, Nancy and Jean were her aunties. Her own sisters Mary, Rita and Elizabeth paint as well, and her daughters also paint and carry the Bush Plum forward. Gracie was a senior custodian for the Altyerre (Dreaming) and for the wide stretch of country it belongs to, with the responsibility for Bush Plum passed to her through her family under traditional law. She passed away in 2024, and the body of work she left behind is one of the most recognisable to come out of Utopia.
Her early years were spent living off the land, walking country with the women and gathering bush foods, and that knowledge sits underneath everything she later put on canvas. Her art practice began in the 1970s with the Utopia Women's Batik Group, working dye and wax on silk. Those batiks were taken up early by the Robert Holmes à Court Collection, one of the most significant private collections in the country. When acrylic paint and canvas were brought to the women of Utopia in the late 1980s through the project known as A Summer Project, Gracie moved her designs across to the new medium and kept developing them for the next three decades.
Gracie worked from an aerial perspective, the view of country as it is seen from above, which is how many Utopia artists paint their land. She built her paintings from very fine dots laid down in close, patient layers, shifting the tone slightly from one layer to the next so the surface seems to lift and recede as you move in front of it. The palette is restrained and the effect is quietly three dimensional. Her subject was almost always the bush plum through its seasons, flower to green fruit to ripe fruit, the whole cycle of a plant that feeds and sustains her country.
DREAMINGS
Bush Plum (Anwekety) - The conkerberry is a small hardy shrub of the desert that flowers after rain and carries dark sweet fruit the women gather and eat fresh or dry for later. Gracie painted it from above as fields of dotted colour, each shift in tone marking another stage of the season. The seeds were scattered across the land in the creation era and the plant has been honoured in song and ceremony ever since, so the painting is both a map of where the plum grows and a record of a story held in trust.
Women's Dreaming (Awelye) - Awelye covers the ceremonies the women perform for their country, the body paint designs applied to the chest, shoulders, upper back and thighs, and the singing and dancing that keep the land healthy and the people with it. The lines and tracks that run through Gracie's work follow the paths the women walk to gather food and to come together for ceremony.
Country - Gracie painted the land she was born into and never left, the sandhills, soakages and open plains around Utopia. Seen from above it is an ancient country, worked over by wind and water for longer than anyone can measure, and her paintings carry the sense of a place that has been read and cared for across countless generations.
EXHIBITIONS AND COLLECTIONS
Gracie exhibited across Australia and internationally from the mid 1980s onward, with her work shown in Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and China, and held in public and private collections here and overseas.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2002 Land is Life, Art from Australia, Jagdschloss Granitz, Binz, Ruegen, Germany
2001-02 Recounting the Essence of Life, Art from Australia, Kunstforum HDZ, Bad Oeynhausen, Germany
2001 The Unseen in Scene, Staedtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Germany
2001 Alliance Francaise de Canberra, Canberra
2000 Mosquito Bore, The Art of the Minimalist, Cairns (solo)
2000 Kunst der Aborigines, Leverkusen, Germany
1999 Alliance Francaise de Canberra and French Embassy, Canberra
1998 Culture Store, Rotterdam, Netherlands
1998 Dreamings, Spazio Pitti Arte, Florence, Italy
1996 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1994 Central Australian Aboriginal Art and Craft Exhibition, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs
1994 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1993 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1992 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1991 8th National Aboriginal Art Awards, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
1991 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1989-91 Utopia, A Picture Story, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide; The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Cork and Limerick, Ireland; Meat Market Gallery, Melbourne
1989 Utopia Women's Paintings, The First Works on Canvas, A Summer Project, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney
1986 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1985 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
COLLECTIONS
Robert Holmes à Court Collection, Perth
Beher Collection, Reimers Foundation, Deidesheim, Germany
Aboriginal Art Museum, the Netherlands
Slaughter and May, London
Private collections throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and the United States
This painting was purchased directly from Gracie and a gallery certificate of authenticity will be provided with the sale.
