Emily Kame Kngwarreye's 'The Alhalkere suite'

‘I was born at the place called Alhalkere, right there.’

One of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s crowning achievements, ‘The Alhalkere suite’ embodies the desert country of her birth, speaking to the ongoing cycles of nature and the spiritual forces that imbue the earth. The monumental installation of 22 canvases describes the land in flood, celebrating the coming of rain after long periods of drought. After the rain, brilliantly coloured wildflowers carpet the landscape, and the soft-looking spinifex bushes appear beside the desert oak trees and blossoming wattle.

Fittingly for an artist as unconventional as Kngwarreye, the 22 panels of this work can be displayed in any order. She did not determine the sequence or impose any limitations on the overall configuration – each time it is displayed it offers a new way of seeing and of telling the story of her land.