Collection: Pammy Kemarr Foster

"I like to learn more about my country, my grandmother's country. Painting is the way of learning."

Pammy Kemarre Foster is an Alyawarr and Warumungu woman from the small community of Wutunugurra (Epenarra). Pammy’s work takes an abstract approach to the depiction of Country, capturing the rhythm of the landscape with repeated motifs and engaging an exaggerated palette to emphasise seasonal changes in the environment. Pammy’s contemporary artistic practice is built on a foundation of cultural knowledge. Her work is influenced by time spent on Country. Hunting trips often form a point of reference for Pammy.

Driving around Wutunugurra one can see the expansive planes of Ilytwelepenty (the Davenport Ranges) appear and disappear with the undulation of the road. The landscape changes dramatically as the sun moves across the sky, casting the red dust of Alyawarr Country in vivid colours. Tiny desert flowers blanket the landscape, encouraged by the heavy rain of the wet season. Pammy’s work responds to the many colours of the desert landscape with depictions of Country after anyerr (flood) and rwa (fire). Intricate nets of dotting coalesce to form a richly textured surface. Bush flowers bloom rhythmically across Pammy’s paintings, interspersed with the ubiquitous white-trunked eucalypts that are scattered throughout the hilly country. After the fire their distinctive trunks are burnt black, and the bush flowers bloom more ferociously still. The medicinal properties of these plants is highly valued; bush medicine is a subject of significance for Pammy and many of her contemporaries in the Epenarra art centre.