The Hicks Collection: Paintings by Emily Kam Kngwarray
November 21, 2024–January 10, 2025
Opening Reception: November 21, 6pm–8pm
D’Lan Contemporary New York
25 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
New York, New York, November 7, 2024 — D’Lan Contemporary is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Emily Kam Kngwarray from The Hicks Collection, a private collection comprising eleven significant paintings by one of Australia’s most revered Indigenous artists. Assembled in Australia more than 30 years ago by Ian Hicks, one of Kngwarray’s longest-standing and most dedicated collectors, the collection is one of the most important of Kngwarray’s work still in private hands. Hicks selected each work for its striking beauty, exceptional quality, and impeccable provenance, representing the diverse facets of Kngwarray’s oeuvre. The Hicks Collection will be on view at D’Lan Contemporary’s New York location fromThursday November 21, 2024 through January 10, 2025.“We are honored to be entrusted with the sale of the Hicks Collection of major paintings by Emily Kam Kngwarray,” says gallery director and founder D’Lan Davidson. “Of particular importance are the three ceremonial paintings Bush Plum Country (1989), Yam Story (1989), and The Anooralya Yam (1990), which are unlike any painting I have presented before. And, when combined with exceptional examples from what has been referred to as the artist’s ‘high colorist’ phase as well as the increasingly rare late anwerlarr (pencil yam) paintings, this museum quality collection stands unsurpassed in the current market.”An Indigenous Australian elder who rarely left her ancestral country, Kngwarray (circa 1910–1996) was a virtuoso painter whose diverse and prolific output prompted art historians, curators, and critics to explore connections and affinities between Central Desert painting and Modernist genres. Kngwarray’s work was first presented internationally at the Australian Pavilion of the 47th Biennale di Venezia in 1997, after which she gained immense critical stature within the broader context of contemporary painting. Twenty years later, her work returned to the Biennale di Venezia as a central feature of All the World’s Futures, curated by the late Okwui Enwezor.
In 2021, D’Lan Contemporary partnered with Gagosian to present Kngwarray’s first solo exhibition in Paris and in 2023 presented a solo exhibition of her paintings at Frieze Masters, London—the first Indigenous Australian ever to be featured among historical and modern trailblazers from all over the world. The Australian National Gallery retrospective Emily Kam Kngwarray (December 2, 2023–April 28, 2024), curated by Kelli Cole and Hetti Perkins, will travel to Tate Modern, London, in summer 2025, the museum’s first-ever solo exhibition devoted to an Australian artist.
The Hicks Collection represents important themes that were of deep significance to Kngwarray and her culture as well as key stylistic phases within her oeuvre, including her early ceremonial paintings such as Yam Story. Kngwarray was custodian of the story of the pencil yam plant, known as anwerlarr in her native language, Anmatyerre; the lattice line work traces the yam’s root system that seasonally parts the earth during the dry months, revealing the tubers below that sustain the Anmatyerr people. In 1992, Kngwarray entered what has been called her “high colorist phase,” and the movement and color in Of My Country, Alalgura illustrates the explosive energy of growth in desert life forms. The four late paintings in the collection mirror body-painting practices associated with the awely women’s ceremonies. Kngwarray was considered an authority in these ceremonies with unmatched cultural and spiritual knowledge.
ABOUT EMILY KAM KNGWARRAY
Emily Kam Kngwarray was born circa 1910 in Alhalker, Anmatyerr Country, 250 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia, where she worked as a camel driver for much of her adult life. One of the last Indigenous Elders to be born and raised in a territory devoid of settler influence, Emily grew up acutely attuned to the land’s riches, its seasons, and her own place and role within its cycles. By the time she started painting on canvas, Kngwarray was a respected Anmatyerr Elder, a keeper of significant ancestral knowledge and co-caretaker of sacred sites in her Country, all aspects of which informed her life and painting.
In 1999, works from the Ian Hicks Collection were exhibited in the touring exhibition Of My Country: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, The Applied Chemicals Collection curated by Karen Quinlan and Anonda Bell, under director Tony Ellwood at the Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia. The exhibition served as a succinct survey of Kngwarray’s career between 1989 and 2006, and toured regional Victoria and New South Wales from 1999 to 2000.
Kngwarray’s work is also held in many public and collections in Australia, North America, and Europe, including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Museum of Victoria, Melbourne; Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, California; Levi Kaplan Collection, Seattle, Washington; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida; SEHWA Museum of Art, Seoul; and The Vatican Collection, Vatican City, among many others.
ABOUT IAN HICKS
Ian Hicks is a prominent art collector and philanthropist in Australia. He received a Queen’s honor for distinguished service to the community through philanthropic support for the arts, education and social welfare bodies. Hicks’s philanthropic work includes Chair, George Hicks Foundation; Director, Mornington Peninsula Foundation; Supporter, National Gallery of Victoria; President, MS Australia; and he also established an Endowment Fund at the Australian Ballet.
ABOUT D’LAN CONTEMPORARY
D’Lan Contemporary was founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2016 by D’Lan Davidson, who has specialized in Australian First Nations art for more than 20 years and was previously Head of Indigenous Art at Sotheby’s Australia.
Representing the continent’s most distinctive and dynamic art movement by the world’s oldest known civilization, D’Lan Contemporary presents regular exhibitions by leading Australian First Nations artists at its galleries in Melbourne, Sydney (opening November 27th), and New York alongside an international program of educational talks and events that celebrate and promote the rich art and culture of the country’s first peoples.
In addition to its international exhibition program, D’Lan Contemporary frequently sources exceptional works of art on behalf of museums, institutions, and noted private collections.
D’Lan Contemporary maintains strict ethical practices and is committed to generating positive industry change to create a sustainable marketplace for this important segment of Australian art and culture. The gallery contributes 30% of its net profits back to First Nations artists and their local communities.
FOR MEDIA ENQUIRIES
For International Requests:
Max Kruger-Dull
Tel: +1-212-675-1800
Blue Medium, Inc.
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For Australian Requests:
Nicole Kenning
Tel: +44 7739 519 290
D’Lan Contemporary
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