The Cazneaux family estate

The Honourable H.B. Wise, Sydney;
Captain Wise, London, by descent from the above;
Australian Historical and Contemporary Drawings and Paintings, Christie’s Australia, Melbourne, 6 March 1970, lot 34;
Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne;
Private Collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above on 8 May 1970;
Sotheby’s Australia, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 24 November 2015, Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, Melbourne, Lot 7;
Private collection, Sydney

References:
Joanna Mendelsohn, The Life and Work of Sydney Long, McGraw-Hill, Sydney,
cat. no. 17, ‘Autumn’, p. 226

Painted at Utopia in December 1989;

CAAMA – Rodney Gooch, Northern Territory;

The Robert Holmes à Court Collection, Western Australia;

Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 30 June 1997, lot 49;

Private Collection, United States of America

In 1989 Emily Kame Kngwarreye produced her first paintings on canvas. At the time she was represented by the highly respected agent, Rodney Gooch at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA). Rodney was one of the few agents to have worked with Emily throughout most of her career, and Anne Marie Brody acknowledges him as the source of Emily’s move to first paint on canvas with Emu Woman, 1988-89. In describing how unique and significant the artist’s oeuvre was, Anne Marie Brody states: “Photographs showing what other artists were producing, especially in 1989, the first year Utopia artists painted on canvas, are an instant reminder of just how much Emily Kame Kngwarreye stood out not only amongst her own Utopia crowd but right across the Western Desert.” 1 Artworks such as Awelye (meaning “my dreaming”) were among the first paintings on canvas to be produced by Emily. 

This seminal body of work set the foundation for her highly celebrated oeuvre in the years to follow. Awelye is a beautiful early reflection of Emily’s aesthetic where fluid configurations of dots and lines, representing seeds and growing yams, are rhythmically mapped across the canvas.

1. Anne Marie Brody, ‘Reflections on the Rodney Gooch Files,’ Indigenous Archives: The making and Unmaking of Aboriginal Art, edited by Darren Jorgensen and Ian McLean, UWP Publishing, 2017, p.46 

Pinacotheca, Melbourne, c. 1988;

Graeme Sturgeon collection from 1984;

Thence by descent;

Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne, 2013;

Private collection, Sydney

Rosalie Gascoigne, 1984, Pinacotheca, Melbourne, no. 16.

Rosalie Gascoigne, 2008, NGV, no. 34 (illus. p. 74, ref. p. 135).

Vista, 20 April – 11 May 2013, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne, no. 20.

Spring/ Summer, 2014, Justin Miller Art, Sydney

“In 2000 BG recalled the construction of Balance: She had the two elements in relation, she knew in her head that there was an optimum relationship. I understand it was the point of actual physical balance, so I manipulated them until the upper egg-shaped outline balanced on the lower curved piece of wood. Given the fact the lower elliptical-shaped board was already fixed to the support, and only one eligible part of the upper shape that would look good, the rounded curve, then there was only one point on the lower curve and only one on the upper that would balance. She said, that’s right. It was only a matter then of fixing the elements on the support (mid-2000 BG to ME, pers. comm.). BG gave a similar explanation at the opening of the 2008 NGV exhibition.” BG is Ben Gascoigne, Rosalie’s husband and ME is Mary Eagle, former curator at National Gallery of Australia and Rosalie’s daughter-in-law.

• An extract from Gascoigne, M., Rosalie Gascoigne: A Catalogue Raisonné, ANU Press, Canberra, 2019