Emily Kame Kngwarreye, circa 1910-1996, UNTITLED (ALHALKERE),

synthetic polymer paint on linen  
bears catalogue number SS1197163 on the reverse  
76.3 BY 55.5CM  

Provenance: 
Painted in 1996 
Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne 
Private collection  

Exhibited: 
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Alhalkere-Paintings from Utopia, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 20 February-13 April 1998; The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 May-19 June 1998; The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 8 September-22 November 1998 
Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye,The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, 26 February-13 April 2008' The National Art Centre, Tokyo, Japan, 28 May-28 July; National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 22 August-12 October 2008  

Literature: 
Margo Neale, et al, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Alhalkere-Paintings from Utopia, Melbourne: Macmillan, 1998, p.62 cat.89, p.144, pl.94 (illus.) 
Margo Neale (ed.), Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2008, pp.206-207 (illus.)

Untitled (Alhalkere) is one of five paintings from the 'Last Series' exhibited in both her 1998 and 2008 retrospective exhibitions, one of which featured on the cover of the Japanese exhibition catalogue. Executed using a broad brush, these final works represent another new change in direction in the artists continuously dynamic oeuvre, and this significant painting is believed to be the first of the series to be offered at auction.  In the Japanese catalogue the 'Last Series' is introduced as follows: 'In a final creative flourish, Emily completed 24 small paintings over a period of three days in the two weeks before her death. They are unlike any she painted before. All lines and dittos vanished into broad, gestural strokes, swept across the surface as slabs of high-keyed colour, composed in sections. Some were painted thinly, in washes of strident hot pinks, cyan blue and magenta over a black background, and others were lushly painted, in which every movement of the brush was visible in creamy folds of paint. Her end was the beginning of a new a radical style'. (Neale, 2008, p.209) .
 
This painting is sold with accompanying Flinders Lane Gallery documentation