27th Jan, 2026 11:30
Modern Art & Design Auction
§ Emily Kam Kngwarreye - Clay Pans | synthetic polymer paint
Emily Kam Kngwarreye
(Australian, 1910-1996)
"Clay Pans"
signed verso, with Delmore Gallery catalogue number 92I022,
synthetic polymer paint on canvas,
151 x 121cms, unframed.
Provenance: Original receipt provided from purchase at Chapman Gallery, Captain Cook Drive, Australian Capital Territory, 2603, 23 September 1993.
The Brian Whitton Collection
Note: Professor Brian Whitton (1935-2025) was well known internationally for his insightful work on freshwater algae, particularly the Cyanobacteria, but also on heavy metals and photosynthetic microorganisms, and on surface phosphatases. He spent his entire career at the University of Durham, leading a laboratory that performed innovative research. He was also the leading authority on the life and works of the modern British artist John Tunnard, (1900-1971). Consequently, he accumulated a significant collection of important works (to be sold in these rooms in Spring/Summer 2026). This interest in Tunnard inspired an interest and collection of many other modern artists, mostly with different perspectives on the natural world, which are also being offered as part of his collection Spring/Summer 2026.
Catalogue Note: 'Clay Pans' was painted around September 1992, not long after Kngwarreye returned to Utopia from visiting Canberra, the Australian national capital, where she received an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship (valued at the time at $110,000) and viewed her paintings hanging in the National Gallery of Australia and in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. She was around 80 years old at the time. On receiving her award, she famously announced her retirement from painting. By 1992, she was less prolific than in the previous three years of her painting career, holding just two solo exhibitions. However, on returning home, her creativity took hold again, and her style shifted.
Deborah Edwards, Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, commented on this newly developed style in 2014 in her publication 'Tradition Today: Indigenous Art in Australia’ "During the early 1990s, Kngwarraye developed a painting technique that literally embodied her sense of the explosive, yet ordered, rhythms of the natural world: she energetically worked her canvas with fluid dots or blobs of colour that formed a pulsing layer over the ‘mapped-out’ underpinnings of her paintings."
'Clay Pans' offers the market an example of this new direction for her, filled with wild painterly energy, overlaid with areas of daubing linearly applied paint. It possibly reflected the speed at which the waters dried to reveal the shaped clay, and absolutely shows the deep connection she had with her spiritual lands, forever changing with the seasons, much like the clay pans themselves.
'Clay Pans' has not been offered on the open market since its purchase in 1993. It is important to note that it was chosen to be exhibited in the recent Tate Modern Exhibition, but chronic illness in Brian's final months prevented completion of the relevant documentation. Moreover, the work immediately preceding this, numbered 92I021, titled 'Alhalkere', was sold by Sotheby's in December 2020 - Aboriginal Art, Lot 18, for $126,000US.
Sold for £52,000
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Auction: Modern Art & Design Auction, 27th Jan, 2026
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