In November of 2017, Earth’s Creation 1 by Kngwarreye’s set a record price for an Australian female artist at 2.1 million dollars.
Kngwarreye painted the four-panel acrylic on canvas in 1994, only two years before her passing. The masterful placement of dot brush strokes of this artwork spans a tremendous 6.32 by 2.75 metres and evokes the artist’s vibrant connection to nature.
Kngwarreye created the iconic masterpiece when she was in her 80s when her eyesight was deteriorating. This trait is possibly how she was able to imbue her artistry with an ethereal quality as if it’s a portal to a paradise just out of focus. Tim Olsen, the owner of a Sydney gallery, is said to have likened the piece to that of Claude Monet calling it Kngwarreye’s “Water Lilies”.
Olsen was the one to purchase the piece for an anonymous client during Cooee Art’s online auction. This auction was Cooee Art’s first Aboriginal art sale for its online platform, holding this piece along with another 60. The auction was scheduled to take place the previous day but was postponed due to an unprecedented influx of traffic onto the website causing the servers to crash.
Cooee art later released a statement stating that this crash was most likely due to an intentional and paid cyberattack. The true culprit or motives behind such an attack were never discovered, but some speculate it was an attempt to sabotage the sale of Earth’s Creation 1.
This art piece has also had a long history of accomplishments, being the first artwork by an Aboriginal artist to breach one-million-dollars at auction back in 2007. Tim Jennings purchased this piece for 1.056 million stating, “I wanted it to reach $1 million so the sale would be remembered, but I sure didn’t want it to go any further. I only had one bid left in me.”
For Jennings, this purchase was one with considerable person value. He met Kngwarreye in her home community of Utopia while he was travelling to remote locations selling second-hand clothes. During this time, Kngwarreye and other remote Aboriginal artists are who inspired him to set up his gallery in Alice Springs.
Another motivation behind acquiring Earth’s Creation was Jennings’s hope that this artwork would encourage more tourists to visit the town. Tourism is the largest industry in Alice Springs, and Jennings aspired to help further cement it as a must-visit destination. He stated his ambition for buying the piece as “I need it to generate some income, if more people come to the gallery to see it, that will give the rest of our artists exposure. We’ll make more sales and keep all those artists in work.”
After showing the work at his Alice Springs gallery, Jennings lent out the painting to a variety of prestigious galleries both in Australia and overseas. It has journeyed around Japan and has also been shown at the 2015 Venice Biennale. The distinguished artwork has also toured locally, paying visits to the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of NSW, and the National Museum of Australia.
Earth’s Creation 1 is now the second highest selling Aboriginal artwork, just behind Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri work Warlugulong which was purchased at 2.4 million dollars.
Earth’s Creation 1 is the climactic expression of Kngwarreye’s cumulative experience as an artist and an Aboriginal woman living in the Utopia region. In this ethereal work, Kngwarreye’s artistic brilliance will live on for generations. As Tim Jennings told the media when he purchased the piece: “I want people to understand that she was a genius”.