GLORIA TAMERRE PETYARRE
Since her first solo exhibition in 1991, Gloria Tamerre Petyarre has been regarded as a leading artist in the Utopia community, and exhibited widely in Australia, Europe, North America and Asia. Like Emily Kam Ngwarray, Petyarre first came to prominence as a batik painter in the late 1970s, before taking up painting on canvas in the late 1980s. As various commentators have noted, this use of sophisticated batik-making techniques, combined with the early referencing of body marking associated with women’s ceremonies, shaped the unique forms of Utopia painting in the 1980s. Petyarre, one of four renowned painter sisters, was considered to have taken various forms based on ceremonial markings and her Altyerr or Aknganenty stories to abstraction more consistently than many of her contemporaries.
Petyarre was an experimental artist renowned for her diversity and mastery as a colourist. Her work is anchored in ‘awely’ – a term that not only describes women’s ceremonial body painting but also the wider concept of ‘women’s business’.
In her paintings throughout the 1990s, which progressively increased in size and painterly precision, Petyarre created some of the most significant recent Aboriginal artworks. They are spectacular paintings, in which she had lately been supplanting her dots and lines with elongated drop-forms in feathery layers that move over the surfaces of her work with the velocity of wind in foliage or the fluidity of water currents. In 1999 Gloria was awarded the prestigious Wynne Prize, an annual exhibition held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Sadly, Gloria passed away in 2021.
Solo Exhibitions
2003 Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
1999 Recent Paintings, Flinders Lane Gallery
1998 Utopia Art, Sydney
1998 Robert Steele Gallery, Adelaide
1997 New Directions, Flinders Lane Gallery
1996 Fire Works Gallery, Brisbane
Group Exhibitions
2006 Utopia, Flinders Lane Gallery
2004 Utopia, Gloria, Barbara, Minnie, Flinders Lane Gallery
2002 The Utopia Six, Flinders Lane Gallery
1999 Wynne Prize exhibition. Winning entry.
1999 Quadrivium Gallery, Sydney
1999 "Bush Garden", Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
1999 Utopia, BMG Art, Adelaide
1998 The Adelaide Festival Theatre
1998 "The Aknangkere Growth Paintings" - First Release, Chapman Gallery, Canberra
1998 SCEGGS Redlands Art Award, Sydney
1998 "The Ladies of Utopia", Chapman Gallery, Canberra
1998 "Utopia IV" Quadrivium Gallery, Sydney
1998 Utopia, Works on Paper, Flinders Lane Gallery
1998 Paintings from Utopia, Flinders Lane Gallery
1998 ARATEXPO New York in association with Mandurah Ltd, New York
1998 "Women Painters of the Desert", Fire Works Gallery, Brisbane
1998 The Importance of Ochre, Flinders Lane Gallery
1997 Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane
1997 Utopia Art, Flinders Lane Gallery
1997 Selected entrant in the Telstra 14th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award
1997 Participated in the artist in residence program at the Art Gallery of South Australia in the exhibition "Dreamings of the Desert"
1997 Dacou Gallery, Adelaide
1997 Quadrivium Gallery, Sydney
1996 Recent Paintings From Utopia, Flinders Lane Gallery
1996 Quadrivium Gallery, Sydney
1996 Framed, Darwin
1995 Dacou Gallery, Adelaide
1990 Utopia Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery
Awards
2004 Wynne Prize for Landscape Painting, Highly Commended
1999 Wynne Prize for Landscape Painting, winning entry
1993 Design for tapestry for Victorian Tapestry Workshop
1993 Mural for Kansas City Zoo
Collections
The National Gallery of Australia
Victorian Museum
Museum & Art Galleries of the Northern Territories
Gold Coast City Art Gallery
Robert Holmes a’ Court Collection
Adelaide Festival Centre Collection
Art Gallery of New South Wales Baker-McKenzie;
Campbelltown City Art Gallery;
Flinders University, South Australia;
Gold Coast City Art Gallery;
Griffith University Collection;
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery;
Museum of Victoria, Melbourne;
National Gallery of Victoria;
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney;
Queensland Art Gallery;
Queensland University of Technology;
Riddoch Art Gallery, S.A.;
Supreme Court, Brisbane;
University of New South Wales;
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, U.S.A.;
Westpac, New York;
James D. Wolfensohn Collection;
Woollongong City Art Gallery;
Woollongong University Collection;
Macquarie Bank;
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland;
Singapore Art Museum;
British Museum
Allen, Allen & Helmsley