Minnie Pwerle or Minnie Motorcar Apwerl was an Australian Aboriginal artist. She came from Utopia, a cattle station in the Sandover area of Central Australia 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. Minnie began painting in 2000 at about the age of 80, and her pictures soon became popular and sought-after works of contemporary Indigenous Australian art.
About Minnie Pwerle in brief
Minnie Pwerle or Minnie Motorcar Apwerl was an Australian Aboriginal artist. She came from Utopia, a cattle station in the Sandover area of Central Australia 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. Minnie began painting in 2000 at about the age of 80, and her pictures soon became popular and sought-after works of contemporary Indigenous Australian art. She was allegedly ‘kidnapped’ by people who wanted her to paint for them, and there have been media reports of her work being forged. Her work is often compared with that of her sister-in-law Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who also came from the Sand over and took up acrylic painting late in life. Her daughter, Barbara Weir, is a respected artist in her own right. Her grandchildren include Fred Purla, who founded private art gallery Detyane, and artist Teresa Purla who founded DACOU, a private gallery in 1993. She died on 18 March 2006, and was survived by all her sisters except Maggie, who asked her not to paint until two days before her death. She had six children and thirteen grandchildren, and as of 2000 had 6 children and 13 grandchildren.
She is buried at Utopia’s largest community, Urultja, or Urultra, in the Northern Territory, 300 kilometres north-east ofAlice Springs. The National Gallery of Victoria estimates around 1915; Birnberg’s biographical survey of Indigenous artists from central Australia gives a birth date of around 1920; The new McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art suggests around 1922. The uncertainty arises because Indigenous Australians often estimate dates of birth by comparison with other events, especially for those born before contact with European Australians. Minnie had an affair with a married man, Jack Weir, described by one source as a pastoral station owner, by a second as an Irish stockman. The pair were jailed; Weir died shortly after his release. The family were reunited in the late 1960s, but Barbara did not form a close bond with Minnie. She went on to have six further children with her husband Jim Ngala, including Aileen, Betty, Raymond and Raymond and two others who by 2010 had died.
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This page is based on the article Minnie Pwerle published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
