Angelina Pwerle Anmatyerr language group, circa 1952
Provenance
Artlore [Mark Gooch], Northern Territory, cat. no. 10-415
The Scholl Collection, Miami
Salon 94, New York
Private Collection, New York
D’Lan Contemporary, Melbourne
Collection of Steve Martin & Anne Stringfield, New York
Exhibitions
Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia, Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA: August 20, 2016 – December 21, 2016 Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, FL: January 28, 2017 – May 14, 2017 Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV: February 17, 2018 – May 13, 2018; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC: June 2 – September 9, 2018; Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 2018 – February 2019
60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, New York, May 2023
Literature
Henry Skerritt, ed. et al, Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia, Prestel Verlag, Munich-London-New York, 2017, p.85 (illus.)
Vanessa Merlino and Luke Scholes, 60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, 2023 (illus.)
Bush Plum by Angelina Pwerle presents a vivid red surface interspersed with clusters of white dots—known as dotprints—applied using the pointed ends of bundled satay sticks in a method referred to as scrunching. The painting’s structure is non-hierarchical and de-centered, extending evenly in all directions. Like much of Pwerle’s work, it evokes a landscape—both tangible and ancestral—specifically her patrilineal clan estate of Ahalpere, located in the desert northeast of Alice Springs. This place is deeply tied to memory, tradition, and the enduring presence of the ancestral past.
As is characteristic of her practice, the orientation of Bush Plum is unfixed; it may be installed without a definitive top or bottom, offering viewers multiple perspectives that resist conventional Western frameworks of display. The title references the Bush Plum ancestor, a significant progenitor figure from the Altyerre (Dreaming), whose influence continues to shape the cultural and spiritual life of the Ahalpere.