Nigel Ip

It’s about time we saw some Aboriginal art in London.

I don’t expect Western audiences to know how to read Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray’s paintings. To anyone used to interpreting art via the Western European tradition, I am certain they will view her work as abstract art. However, in the Aboriginal visual language, this is figurative art.

A major exhibition like this monograph at Tate Modern has been waiting to happen, and I’m so glad it came; we got a glimpse of it in 2021-23 in the free exhibition A Year in Art: Australia 1992. It’s a great reminder that there are entire painting traditions that have survived independently from the Western canon, forcing us to remap our understanding of art and its intellectual frameworks completely anew.

Raised as an Anmatyerr woman, over 80 works by Kngwarray are on show, highlighting the ways she translated her ceremonial and spiritual engagement with her ancestral Country, Alhalker, into batik textiles and acrylic paintings. These include significant works like Emu Woman (1988), her first ever work on canvas that attracted widespread media attention, and The Alhalker Suite (1993), a vibrant portrait of her Country comprised of 22 canvases.

Because each piece is imbued with personal reflections, stories, and generational knowledge, I would have liked to have seen more lengthy captions, not just to spoonfeed the viewer for greater accessibility, but to engage them further in the rich oral tradition from which the works are based.

It would also have been nice to see some works displayed flat on the floor, emulating Kngwarray’s actual painting process while sat on the ground, and emphasising the topographical language of Aboriginal art. These are, after all, literal sites of memory where stories are memorialised and retold.

Nonetheless, this is a beautiful exhibition that represents a kind of love letter from Kngwarray to her Country. I just wish I could read the paintings better.

Emily Kam Kngwarray (10 July 2025 – 11 January 2026) is at Tate Modern, London, https://www.tate.org.uk/