Born c.1945, and an Anmatyerre speaker, her country is Atnangkere and her Dreamings are as for Ada Bird : Mountain Devil Lizard, Bean, Emu, Pencil Yam, Grass Seed, Small Brown Grass. She has four sisters who are also artists: Ada Bird , Violet, Myrtle, and Kathleen. She first gained recognition as an artist working in the medium of batik, exhibiting with the Utopia women in shows around Australia and abroad for a decade (1977-87) before taking up the medium of canvas, painting her first work for CAAMA’s Summer Project exhibition. In 1990 she travelled to Ireland, London and India as a representative of the Utopia women, accompanying the Utopia: A Picture Story exhibition (Tandanya, Adelaide, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin Ireland, and Meat Market Gallery, Melbourne, 1991). In 1991 she had her first solo exhibition at Utopia Arts in Sydney. Her work is based on the body paint designs for her Dreamings, at first showing clearly the designs painted across the women’s breasts and shoulders in the ceremony. Since those early highly distinctive works, she has developed her painting to higher levels of abstraction, continually experimenting with line and colour. She says she prefers the greater freedom and control she finds with the medium of acrylic on canvas. Several of the works in her solo exhibition had no dots at all, but bands of brilliant colour whose optical effects have evoked comparisons with the British artist Bridget Riley. Gloria’s husband, Ronnie Price Mpetyane, started painting in 1989 and does strong men’s paintings in the dot style, as well as neo-western landscapes in vivid colours. They live at Mulga Bore (Akaye Soakage). Gloria’s work features on the cover of The Art of Utopia (Michael Boulter), and has been included in major survey and solo exhibitions in Australia and internationally.

Writers:

Johnson, Vivien

Date written:

1994

Last updated:

2011