Kngwarray Special Exhibition: National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia has a general exhibition that, like all public galleries in Australia, is free. However, every now and then there is a special exhibition that is paid entry... and there are the occasional ones that catch our eye... or in this cause, the eye of my wife.

My taste in visual arts is pretty tame... I don't appreciate or understand much of the more modern stuff, and like my tastes in music, I'm pretty heavily rooted in Baroque to Classical Western European culture.

This special exhibition featuring artwork by Indigenous artist Emily Kam Kngwarray was always going to be a stretch for me, but it was definitely something that my wife was interested in.

Kngwarray did have an interesting life and her development as an artist was also quite interesting... but for me, the art style didn't resonate with me at all.

I did enjoy the larger fabric prints that were hanging from the ceiling... but I did like them more as abstract patterns rather than as pieces that spoke to me with any meaning.

For some reason, similar patterns in the wall mounted canvases just had no appeal to me...

... but it was interesting to see the changes in the artistic techniques and style... but again, still no emotional affect as far as I was concerned.

Again, it was the fabric prints that held the most appeal for me... but again, as background interest and patterning rather than any deeper meaning.

Sigh... I really dislike this sort of writing about the artwork though. Either I'm missing something, or this would be the similar word mélange that an AI would spit out... honestly, my brain turns off about a few words that are too long and verbose strung together in a meaningless dense format.

My wife loved the exhibition... I was less impressed, and my kids were bored and raced off to a different section. I'm afraid that it didn't really resonate with me at all... and it did lead to a pretty heated debate in the car ride home!