Minnie Pwerle (1910-2006)

Minnie Pwerle was born in c.1910/1920 and passed away in 2006. She commenced painting in her late eighties and almost instantly became a success story. Just five years into her career as an Aboriginal artist she was listed as one of Australia’s Top 50 “Most Collectable Artists” in the Australian Art Collector. During her brief career her paintings were steadily growing in popularity. Minnie Pwerle painted Awelye, a title that encapsulates women’s ceremonies and body paint and also significant aspects of life as experienced by Aboriginal people for many generations. These may include sources of food like bush fruits, ceremonies or dancing lines as well as her homeland Atnwengerrp, a region of Utopia, some 250 km’s north-west of Alice Springs in Central Australia. For example, when Minnie painted dancing lines, she replicated dancing tracks which were painted on women’s bodies before a ceremony were performed. Other paintings show bush fruits like bush melon, bush tomato or rockmelon and replicate the same designs painted on bodies prior to ceremonies.