I’m being provocative. The Sydney Film Festival has just shown the world premier of a fine (and first) documentary on the great Emily Kame Kngwarreye – called ‘Emily : I Am Kam’. Yet throughout the film, throughout her life and in all the earlier books and catalogues (I have 11!) on the Old Lady, she is clearly called and spelled Kame. Similarly, she was born at and was therefore closely related to a remnant rock mesa on Utopia Station called Alhalkere. It even has a significant hole in it that her fellow Anmatyerre women call the Nose Hole – which Emily proudly had (made by her grandfather) in her own nasal septum. Yet every subtitle in the film removes the ‘e’ ending from all those words.
I believe this is an unfortunate consequence of the 2023/4 exhibition at the National Gallery in Canberra – which is about to translate in part to the Tate Gallery in London – where orthographer Jenny Green played a major consultative role. She not only declared those last letters (in an unwritten language) supererogatory, but also decreed that Emily really spelled her skin-name Kngwarray. Oddly, Ms Green, back in 1981 when she was writing about the precursor Batik project which she’d initiated at Utopia in 1976, spelled that name Ngwarai! Thank god she’s left the ‘K’ there this time – there was a threat at one time that Emily would never have been found in any book index starting with an ‘N’.
I’m reliably informed by those who knew the living Emily that she was totally happy to be Emily Kame Kngwarrey in orthographic eternity.
But that NGA/Tate show is an essential part of this film for other reasons. Curators Hetti Perkins and Kelli Cole appear in the film, unsurprisingly as Kelli is director Danielle Maclean’s sister. And both are nieces of Warramunga man, Robert Cole Jnr, artist and partner to Rodney Gooch, the man who converted Emily (and Utopia) from batik to canvas. It was also very much the curators’ project that current family and community should play a major role in their selection and interpretation of works for their exhibition. And the film-makers take the same path, talking to them on Country and accompanying them to Canberra for the opening.
Fortunately, as a result, the film is broader than the exhibition. For their picturing of Jenny Green’s (and Julia Murray’s) batik era, their full acknowledgement of Gooch (and his CAAMA radio station employment) and the recognition of the early embrace by Ann Brady at the Holmes a Court Collection are important aspects of a history that saw Emily emerge as a star from what, in the 1990s, was largely promoted as a community culture. And the film goes on to recognise many a player who some would like written out of the history – gallerist Christopher Hodges who gave Emily her first solo show (via Gooch) appears several times cogently; the Delmore connection, the neighbouring station where Emily often retreated to paint – with Janet Holt/Wilson seen on screen; and the Dacou dealership which emerged from niece Barbara Weir’s family connection.
We even get reference to Emily’s famous Last Series for Dacou which caused tears and was seen as a clear Zen connection in Japan, though was incredibly left out of the NGA show.
There are two significant moments in the film for connoisseurs. The Anmatyerre women explain aspects of the yam plant that was the Kame in Emily’s name and totem. The seeds change colour underground as they mature, with, for instance, a yellow shade in the seeds’ teens. How glorious to go from the film to the Art Leven auction show to see the 1990 painting Ankara Merne – Intekwe from Emily’s painting teens (though she was in her 80s) with several unexplained streaks of yellow. Yours for half a million dollars on Tuesday evening?
But this particular work links to a comment from orthographer Jenny Green in the film: “Her best works are outstanding”. Too often, all Emilys are lumped together as incomparable. Hodges recognises the painting’s importance in the Art Leven catalogue – for the work comes from his very first solo show for Emily. He notes the under-painting of emu footprints in the sand and stresses the cultural importance of the over-dotted Intekwe – the native bush plum which feeds the emu – so closely associated with Emily that it’s never been painted by any of her artistic followers since her death.
In her life there were surprises. Who’d have thought that the deeply traditional Emily would happily head for the 1988 Invasion Day demos in Sydney? And who called her “The boss for batik”, I wonder when Rodney Gooch condemned her (in my 1998 film about the industry) as an absolute messer in the complex business of batik work? Maybe it related to Jenny Green’s wonderful recording of her peremptory demands to “Boil some meat – we need to eat”?
Don’t miss this richly rewarding film on NITV during NAIDOC Week (9th July), and later on SBS and its OnDemand. It deserves to be in cinemas. ‘Emily : I Am Kam’ is a Tamarind Tree Pictures production for NITV with funding from Screen Territory.
