Anatye

Anatye is a new exhibition from multi award-winning Indigenous artist, Margaret Loy Pula, at Mitchell Fine Art from 29 June to 23 July.

The gallery is renowned for showing works from many of the country’s fine Indigenous artists, and are proud to host Anatye – a word for bush potato or wild yam – a plant that’s an important native food source for Margaret Loy Pula’s people, the Anmatyerre.

Pula, from the remote community of Utopia in Central Australia, paints traditional stories handed down from her father about country, ceremonial designs and the Anatye – which has strong spiritual significance for the Anmatyerre people.

Using intricate dot work, the artist has been awarded many times for her efforts, being the first Indigenous artist to win the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize in 2012 in South Australia. Other milestones were being the first female to win the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the Paddington Art Prize in Sydney, both in 2011. She’s also been a finalist in several art prizes including the Wynne Prize (2012), Sulman Prize (2013), Blake Prize (2013), and is a current finalist in the 2016 Tattersall’s Club Landscape Art Prize.

Word is spreading in the art world, with Pula holding major exhibitions in New York in the past 18 months, as well as exhibiting at top art fairs such as Singapore, Miami and Mexico City. She’s continuing a long and prestigious legacy in her family, being the daughter of artist, Kathleen Petyarre, while her aunties – the Petyarre sisters (Gloria Petyarre, Ada Bird Petyarre, Nancy Kunoth Petyarre and Myrtle Petyarre) – are all established artists with works in collections in Australia and overseas.

By Vicki Englund

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