Born: 1973, Utopia, Northern Territory
Language: Anmatyerre
Known as: Janet Golder, Janet Golder Ngwarai
Dreamings: Awelye (Women's Ceremonial Body Paint), Yam Flower, Bush Tucker, My Country
Janet Golder Kngwarreye was born in 1973 at Utopia in the Northern Territory into one of the most celebrated artistic families in Central Australia. Her parents, Margaret Golder and Sammy Pitjara, are both established artists. Her grandmothers are the renowned Utopia painters Polly Ngale and Angelina Pwerle. Emily Kame Kngwarreye — widely regarded as the most significant Aboriginal painter of the twentieth century — is Janet's grandmother through the Anmatyerre kinship system. In Anmatyerre culture the skin name Kngwarreye defines a relationship that carries the full weight of family: shared Country, shared Dreaming and shared law. Janet is married to Ronnie Bird, son of the acclaimed Ada Bird Pitjara (Petyarre), the eldest of the seven Petyarre sisters of Utopia. Her sister Belinda Golder Kngwarreye is also an accomplished painter. Art runs through every branch of her family.
Janet grew up watching the women of her family paint, absorbing not only the technique but the deeper knowledge of Country and women's ceremony that each painting carries. The Dreamings she paints were passed to her through this direct line of family and Country — the Awelye body paint designs of the Anmatyerre women, the Yam Flower, the Bush Tucker of her homeland, and the aerial compositions of land and women's story that she calls My Country. Each subject comes from the same deep well of Anmatyerre knowledge and law.
Her painting practice began with Awelye and Bush Tucker, and in recent years her primary focus has shifted to My Country compositions that map the Utopian landscape from above, weaving together the features of Country, women's cultural practice and bush tucker into canvases of extraordinary energy and colour. Janet paints with a sophisticated command of colour and a technical confidence that has made her one of the most sought-after artists working in Utopia today. Her works have been exhibited in galleries across Australia and internationally.
DREAMINGS
Awelye — The ceremonial body paint designs of the Anmatyerre women of Utopia. In ceremony, Awelye marks are applied to women's bodies — lines and patterns that carry knowledge of Country, kinship and law passed from woman to woman across generations. When Janet paints Awelye she is not decorating a surface. She is recording something that belongs to her by birthright, learned directly from the women of her family and her Country.
Yam Flower — The yam (Ipomoea costata) pushes up through the red Utopian soil after rain, its vine trailing across Country and its flower opening in a burst of colour. The plant holds deep significance in the women's ceremony and knowledge of the region. Janet's Yam Flower paintings build the form of the flower outward across the canvas in dense, layered mark-making — rings and arcs of fine dots that move and shift as the eye travels across them.
Bush Tucker — The foods of Utopian Country: the plants, seeds, fruits and animals that the women have gathered, prepared and shared knowledge of for thousands of years. In Janet's hands Bush Tucker is not a still life. It is a map — Country as the women who walk it and sing it have always known it, seen from above and alive with meaning.
My Country — Janet's primary subject in recent years and the fullest expression of her vision. These paintings take the aerial perspective that runs deep through Central Desert art, Country seen from above the way it is held in memory and in law. Women's ceremony, Awelye body paint designs, bush tucker and the features of the Utopian landscape all come together in one surface. No single element dominates. Everything belongs to everything else. My Country is both map and story, and it is in these paintings that Janet's singular command of colour and composition is most fully on display.
EXHIBITIONS AND RECOGNITION
Janet Golder Kngwarreye has exhibited nationally and internationally throughout her career.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2022 Connection — Songlines from Australia's First Peoples, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
2022 Synergy 2022 — First Nations Artists from around Australia, Everywhen Art, Shoreham VIC
2021 Synergy — Art from the Heartlands of Aboriginal Australia, Everywhen Art, Shoreham VIC
RECOGNITION
2022 Work featured in the immersive experience Connection — Songlines from Australia's First Peoples, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
2019 Commissioned by Coles Group to paint a large My Country canvas, reproduced as two screen prints now displayed on the front glass facade of the Coles store, Alice Springs
2014 Painted a Smeg FAB28 refrigerator presented at the National Architecture Awards, Darwin
This painting was purchased directly from Janet and a gallery certificate of authenticity will be provided with the sale.
