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Aboriginal Art > Aboriginal Art Styles > Western Desert Art > Utopia Art > Emily Kame Kngwarreye > Emily Kame Kngwarreye Values

Understanding Emily Kame Kngwarreye Values and Auction results

Works offered at auction: 1551
Sale rate: 65%
Highest recorded sale: $2,100,000
Median sale price: $19,000 AUD

This page supports the main Emily Kame Kngwarreye biography and painting style page, where you can explore her life, artistic development and distinctive approach to painting in greater detail.

With more than 1,500 works recorded at auction and cumulative recorded sales of more than A$50 million, Emily Kame Kngwarreye has one of the largest and most valuable auction markets of any Australian artist.

That scale, however, makes her work unusually difficult to value. For most artists I can illustrate several paintings from each year and show a reasonably clear progression in style. Emily was different. Her development was extraordinarily rapid, but it was not linear. She could abandon a technique, return to it later, combine it with something new, or produce paintings in dramatically different styles within a relatively short period.

For that reason, arranging her auction results simply by year does not give collectors a particularly useful picture of value. Instead, I have broadly grouped the paintings according to their visual characteristics and painting technique. These categories overlap, and they should not be regarded as formal art-historical classifications. They are intended as a practical way of comparing paintings that actually look and feel similar.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Value Batiks


Emily’s batiks are treated separately from her paintings. They are important both in their own right and because their lines, networks and repeated marks provide an important visual bridge between her earlier artistic practice and her later work on canvas. With relatively few definite auction examples currently available here, I have not divided them further into stylistic groups.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Awelye, c.1987, cotton batik with dense white, ochre and dark wax-resist lines, dots and looping organic forms.

Awelye (c.1987)

Size
199 × 85 cm

Medium
Cotton batik, wax-resist dyeing

Auction
Bonhams, Notable Collections: Australian and Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 3 December 2025, Lot 221

Provenance
Rodney Gooch for Utopia Batik at Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), Alice Springs (label attached, cat. 706); Private Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above c.1987.

Price realized

$50,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Urapuntja (1987), a silk batik with dense flowing white and pale yellow linear marks and dots across a red-orange ground.

Urapuntja (1987)

Size
180 × 85 cm

Medium
Batik on silk

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Australian & International Fine Art, Sydney, 29 November 2007, Lot 26

Provenance
Acquired from the CAAMA shop, Alice Springs, November 1987; Sotheby’s, Sydney, 9 November 1998, Lot 160; Applied Chemicals Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised
$16,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Bush Tucker, c.1985, a silk batik with flowing pink, orange and cream organic forms, fine lines and clusters of dots across a rich reddish-brown ground.

Bush Tucker (c.1985)

Size
220 × 111 cm

Medium
Batik on silk

Auction
Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art), Indigenous Fine Art Auction, Sydney, 8 June 2021, Lot 18

Provenance
Chapman Gallery, ACT; Private Collection, ACT.

Price Realised
$11,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alhakare, c.1987, a cotton batik densely covered with white, black and red dots, sweeping parallel lines and layered curving forms.

Alhakare (c.1987)

Size
189 × 84 cm

Medium
Batik on cotton

Auction
Deutscher~Menzies, Fine Aboriginal Art and a Collection of New Ireland Malagan Sculptures, Melbourne, 27 June 2000, Lot 88

Provenance
Not stated in the supplied record.

Price Realised
$9,500 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye value – Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alhalkere, a cotton batik with bold cream, yellow and pink linear forms, zigzags and branching marks surrounded by multicoloured dots on a deep red-black ground.

Alhalkere

Size
86 × 89 cm

Medium
Batik on cotton, signed ‘Emily’ within the design

Auction
Sotheby’s, Fine Australian, Aboriginal and International Paintings, Melbourne, 22 November 1999, Lot 447

Provenance
Not stated in the supplied record.

Price Realised
$4,600 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Value Early Dot Paintings with Underlying Linear Structures

Fine underlying networks of looping, branching and intersecting lines are a defining feature of Emily’s earliest canvases, usually overlaid with dense fields of dots. The balance between the two varies considerably: in some paintings the linear structure dominates, dividing the surface into large irregular compartments; in others it is almost submerged beneath layers of pink, yellow, white, ochre and red dotting. Dark or earthy grounds often remain visible between the marks, giving these works considerable depth.

Anooralya (Wild Yam), 1989 is an important benchmark, with its pale yam-root lines partially concealed beneath an extraordinarily dense dotted surface. Other works from 1989–90 show Emily already experimenting dramatically with scale, colour and the relative prominence of line and dot. Yam Tracking, 1990, for example, brings the underlying network emphatically to the surface, while other paintings allow it to dissolve almost completely into the dots.

These early canvases also make the transition from Emily’s batiks particularly clear. The looping, repeated and interlocking structures seen in the textiles persist, but on canvas the dots increasingly become an independent layer, sometimes obscuring the lines beneath. Rather than a sudden invention of a new style, the paintings show Emily transforming a visual language she had already developed through batik and, before that, through ceremonial body painting and designs made in sand.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled (Alalgura/Emu Country), 1989, with dense fields of pink, yellow, white, ochre and brown dots layered over looping lines and irregular organic forms.

Untitled (Alalgura/Emu Country) (1989)

Size
150 × 120.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian + International Fine Art, Melbourne, 1 December 2022, Lot 48

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, via Alice Springs, 1989; Coventry Gallery, Sydney; Private Collection, Sydney; Hogarth Galleries, Sydney; The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in September 1995.

Price Realised
$280,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Edunga, 1990, with dense red, orange, ochre and black dotting over an underlying network of broad curving and intersecting lines.

Edunga (1990)

Size
120 × 90 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal & Tribal Art, Sydney, 9 November 1997, Lot 130

Provenance
Not stated in the supplied record.

Price Realised
$18,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Awelye, 1990, densely covered with pale pink, cream, yellow and white dots over a network of sinuous pink lines on a dark ground.

Awelye (1990)

Size
152 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 20 July 2009, Lot 81

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, 1990; Corporate Collection, Sydney; Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 28–29 July 2003, Lot 130; Glenn Schaeffer Collection.

Price Realised
$150,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alhalkere, 1990, with dense pink, red, white and ochre dots layered over broad looping and intersecting pink lines on a dark ground

Alhalkere (1990)

Size
76 × 61 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 25 July 2005, Lot 100

Provenance
Painted at Soakage Bore in August 1990; gifted by the artist that year to a registered nurse working for the Urapuntja Health Service at Utopia; Private Collection, NSW.

Price Realised
$15,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alalgura Awelye, 1991, densely covered with red, yellow, pink, white and black dots over faint meandering linear forms.

Alalgura Awelye (1991)

Size
152 × 122 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 31 July 2006, Lot 102

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory, 1991; Hogarth Gallery, Sydney; Private Collection, New York.

Price Realised
$150,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Awelye, 1989, with dense white, yellow, ochre and pink dots layered over fine looping and branching lines on a dark brown ground.

Awelye (1989)

Size
90 × 60 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 24 July 2007, Lot 170

Provenance
Bears artist’s name, Delmore Gallery catalogue number 0F06 and inscription ‘Katchera, Indoorkura, White Daisy’ on the reverse.

Price Realised
$42,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Anooralya (Wild Yam), 1989, with dense red, yellow, white and pink dotting layered over pale meandering yam-root lines on a dark ground.

Anooralya (Wild Yam) (1989)

Size
150 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 17 March 2021, Lot 6

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs; Private Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised
$350,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Yam Tracking, 1990, with broad looping and intersecting pink lines over a dark ground densely covered with yellow, pink, ochre and green dots.

Yam Tracking (1990)

Size
152.5 × 122 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Aboriginal & Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 27 March 2013, Lot 2

Provenance
Private Collection, Donald Holt, Delmore Downs Station, Alice Springs. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Delmore Gallery.

Price Realised
$136,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Mourning, 1991, a large horizontal painting densely covered with red, pink, purple, blue, ochre and dark dots, interrupted by repeated pale linear and barred forms.

Mourning (1991)

Size
226 × 128.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Smith & Singer, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 21 August 2024, Lot 22

Provenance
Emily Kam Kngwarreye, Alice Springs; Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs (stock no. 1Y30), commissioned from the artist; Private Collection, Queensland, acquired from the above.

Price Realised
$300,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Value: Dense Dot Colour Fields — Seed and Wildflower Paintings

From around 1989 and into the early 1990s, Emily produced paintings in which dense fields of dots became the dominant structure. The underlying lines visible in many early canvases recede, become almost completely obscured, or disappear altogether.

A distinctive feature is the fairly even scale of the dots. They are not mechanically uniform, but Emily repeatedly placed dots over and among earlier dots of approximately equal size. Colours overlap in successive layers, with portions of earlier marks remaining visible. Thousands of individual dots consequently merge into larger shifting fields of colour and density.

Many of these works are described as seed paintings, while titles and documentation also refer to flowers, grasses, plant foods and seasonal abundance. Rather than illustrating individual plants, the accumulated marks evoke Country covered with seeds, flowers and new vegetation, particularly following rain.

Colour varies enormously. Alhalkere, 1989, is exceptionally dense; the Rare Winter Rain paintings of 1990 use cooler, subdued colours; while Kame Flowers, 1991, creates an almost continuous field from warm yellow and ochre dots. Other examples are more open, but retain the characteristic layering of similarly sized marks.

These are therefore more than simply “dot paintings.” From close range they consist of thousands of separate overlapping marks; from a distance those dots merge into broad fields of colour, movement and seasonal abundance.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Of Rare Winter Rain, 1990, densely covered with layered pink, green, olive, cream, red and pale blue dots across a dark green and earthy ground.

Of Rare Winter Rain (1990)

Size
151 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Twenty Classics of Australian Art + Important Australian & International Fine Art, Melbourne, 11 November 2020, Lot 52

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, via Alice Springs; Chapman Gallery, Canberra; Private Collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above in 1990.

Price Realised
$150,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alhalkere, 1989, with an exceptionally dense field of tiny white, yellow, ochre, pink and dark dots almost completely obscuring fine underlying lines.

Alhalkere (1989)

Size
152 × 121.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Bonhams, The Grundy Collection, Sydney, 26 June 2013, Lot 18

Provenance
Commissioned by Donald and Janet Holt, Delmore Downs, Northern Territory; Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Collection of Ruth and Reuben Hall, Melbourne; Niagara Galleries, Melbourne; The Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers-Grundy Collection, acquired in 2006.

Price Realised
$250,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Kame Flowers, 1991, densely covered with thousands of small yellow, ochre, orange, cream and muted green dots forming an almost continuous field of colour.

Kame Flowers (1991)

Size
151.8 × 90 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Smith & Singer, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 12 April 2022, Lot 48

Provenance
Emily Kngwarreye, Alice Springs; Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs, commissioned from the artist, October 1991; Count and Countess von Faber-Castell, acquired from the above in 1995.

Price Realised
$95,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Of a Rare Winter Rain I, 1990, with dense yellow, ochre, mauve and blue-grey dots forming shifting fields of colour across the canvas.

Of a Rare Winter Rain I (1990)

Size
121.5 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Christie’s, Modern Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 12 October 2004, Lot 117

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory; Private Collection, Brisbane. Accompanied by a Delmore Gallery certificate of authenticity.

Price Realised
$30,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s My Anooralya Story, 1991, densely covered with overlapping white, black, ochre, yellow, grey and olive dots forming an all-over field.

My Anooralya Story (1991)

Size
90.5 × 61 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Smith & Singer, Important Australian & International Art, Sydney, 24 June 2020, Lot 54

Provenance
Utopia Fine Art Gallery, Alice Springs; Private Collection, Queensland, acquired from the above in 1991.

Price Realised
$22,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s My Country, covered with broad overlapping dots in pale blue, grey, cream, ochre, white and soft green, forming a softly mottled field of colour.

My Country

Size
76 × 129 cm

Medium
Acrylic on canvas

Auction
Theodore Bruce Auctioneers & Valuers, Fine Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 30 September 2025, Lot 9030

Provenance
The Original Aboriginal Art Co. Pty Ltd, cat. no. TOAAC 4102P.

Price Realised
$12,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Post-Summer Abundance, with overlapping red, green, yellow, cream and white dots forming loose clusters across a luminous green ground.

Post-Summer Abundance

Size
122 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Christie’s, Australian and European Paintings, Sydney, 17 August 1998, Lot 1105

Provenance
Not stated in the supplied record.

Price Realised
$9,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Value: Structured Dot Linework

During the early-1990s, particularly 1992–95, Emily produced a distinctive group of paintings in which dots themselves create the underlying structure. Rather than covering a separate network of painted lines, the dots are arranged into continuous rows that sweep, curve, radiate or run roughly parallel across the canvas.

These works differ from Emily’s dense dot colour fields, where repeated dots accumulate into an almost continuous surface. Here there is a stronger sense of direction. Lines made from dots organise the composition, sometimes forming broad bands, channels or radiating structures. Colour may be layered within these rows, with white, pink, yellow, red and other colours reinforcing the movement.

The distinction is important because these paintings sit between two better-known aspects of Emily’s work: her dot paintings and her linear paintings. The line has not disappeared; instead, it is constructed from sequences of dots. In some works the rows remain extremely clear, while in others they multiply and overlap until they begin to dissolve back into a field of colour.

The group demonstrates how Emily continually reworked the relationship between dot, line and colour, rather than progressing through a simple sequence of separate styles.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Fertile Desert, 1992, with brilliant red and orange paint layered over yellow, green and pink dotted bands arranged in radiating and curving formations.

Fertile Desert (1992)

Size
152 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, New York, 23 May 2023, Lot 37

Provenance
Painted at Delmore Downs Station, Northern Territory, for Delmore Gallery, September 1992; Galerie Dettinger-Mayer, Lyon; Stefano Spaccapietra Collection, Switzerland; Sotheby’s, London, Aboriginal Art, 14 March 2018, Lot 39; Private Collection.

Price Realised
$535,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled (Wildflower Dreaming), 1992, with radiating and curving rows of pink, red, orange, yellow and white dots forming broad bands across the canvas.

Untitled (Wildflower Dreaming) (1992)

Size
151.5 × 122 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Menzies, Australian & International Fine Art, Melbourne, 10 August 2017, Lot 60

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory.

Price Realised
$32,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Yam Country, 1993, with curving rows of large green, pink, cream, red, blue and purple dots sweeping across irregular fields of colour.

Yam Country (1993)

Size
152 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Menzies, Australian & International Fine Art & Sculpture, Melbourne, 30 June 2021, Lot 43

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory (stock no. 93LO45); Maunsell Wickes, Sydney (stock no. MW755); Private Collection.

Price Realised
$60,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled (Merne Kame), 1995, with layered fields and flowing rows of yellow, orange, pink, red, white and dark dots creating a richly textured surface.

Untitled (Merne Kame) (1995)

Size
151.5 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian Indigenous Art, Melbourne, 22 March 2023, Lot 6

Provenance
Commissioned in September 1995 by Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs; Private Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised
$235,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s My Mother’s Country, with dense overlapping fields of mauve, brown, red, orange, blue, black and white brush-dabs creating a richly layered surface.

My Mother’s Country

Size
124 × 176 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
GFL Fine Art, Spring 2024 Fine Art Auction, Perth, 26 November 2024, Lot 58

Provenance
Indigenart, catalogue no. DSC 00002. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Price Realised
$60,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alalgura Country, 1994, with dense vertical streams of pink, white, red and mauve dots cascading across the canvas, with darker passages at upper right.

Alalgura Country (1994)

Size
153 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Aboriginal + Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 6 October 2010, Lot 16

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs; Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 24 June 2002, Lot 94; Private Collection, Sydney. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Janet Holt, Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs.

Price Realised
$150,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Yam Country, 1995, with long parallel rows of white, cream and pale pink dots flowing and bending across a vivid red-orange ground.

Yam Country (1995)

Size
148.5 × 228.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 July 2004, Lot 118

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs, in 1995; Private Collection, Sydney.

Price Realised
$81,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Value: Merged Dot Colour Fields

Closely related to Emily’s Structured Dot Linework are paintings in which the rows of dots begin to lose their individual definition. Dots are still visible and often retain a directional flow, but they are applied so closely, repeatedly and sometimes wetly that neighbouring marks overlap and merge.

Instead of the eye following clear lines of separate dots, the dots accumulate into broader bands, patches and fields of colour. Individual circular marks can often still be detected at the edges or within thinner passages, while denser areas become almost continuous painted surfaces.

These works can vary considerably. Some retain obvious curving or parallel rows beneath the merging paint; others dissolve much further, leaving only fragments of dotted structure within broad areas of colour. In the most extreme examples, the original distinction between dot, dab and brushstroke becomes difficult to make.

This makes the group an important overlap between Emily’s structured dot paintings and her increasingly gestural work. The dot has not disappeared—it has been layered, crowded and merged until it becomes colour itself.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alhalkere, 1993, with broad, softly layered fields of pale pink, mauve, blue-grey and ochre crossed by curving rows and bands of dots.

Alhalkere (1993)

Size
151 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Smith & Singer, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 2 May 2023, Lot 39

Provenance
Emily Kngwarreye, Alice Springs; Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs, commissioned from the artist in 1993; Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London; Private Collection, England; Sotheby’s Australia, Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 20 October 2008, Lot 246; Private Collection, London, acquired from the above.

Price Realised
$60,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Awelye, 1993, with loose curving rows of yellow, white, pink, mauve and blue dots moving across softly layered fields of green, ochre and pastel colour.

Awelye (1993)

Size
121 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Bonhams, The Thomas Vroom Collection, Sydney, 6 September 2015, Lot 123

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory.

Price Realised
$18,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled (Awelye), 1992, with bold irregular bands of pink, red, orange, yellow, blue, green, cream and purple sweeping across the canvas.

Untitled (Awelye) (1992)

Size
164 × 228 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian Indigenous Art, Melbourne, 26 March 2025, Lot 14

Provenance
Mulga Bore Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Hugh Jamieson Collection, Sydney; Private Collection, New South Wales; Private Collection, Brisbane.

Price Realised
$975,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Awelye, 1993, dominated by vivid red and crimson with loosely layered patches and gestural marks of pink, ochre, purple and dark brown.

Awelye (1993)

Size
153 × 122.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 25 July 2005, Lot 186

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs, in 1993; Private Collection, Germany.

Price Realised

$18,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled, 1992, with repeated semicircular forms and curving bands of red, yellow, pink and purple dots across a warm pink and ochre ground.

Untitled (1992)

Size
120 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 17 March 2021, Lot 38

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, via Alice Springs, Northern Territory, June 1992; Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs; Private Collection, United Kingdom, acquired from the above in 1992; Phillips, London, 5 November 2020, Lot 25; Private Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised

$22000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alalgura Landscape, 1993, with softly layered yellow, ochre and green fields crossed by loose curving rows of cream, brown and pink dots.

Alalgura Landscape (1993)

Size
121 × 90.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Bonhams, The Thomas Vroom Collection, Sydney, 6 September 2015, Lot 125

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory.

Price Realised
$18,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Alalgura Country, 1994, with horizontal rows and bands of pink, yellow, green, ochre, cream and red dots flowing across a softly layered earthy ground.

Alalgura Country (1994)

Size
121 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Bonhams, The Thomas Vroom Collection, Sydney, 6 September 2015, Lot 214

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory.

Price Realised
$22,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Value: Painted Line and Yam Networks

From 1994 and especially through 1995–96, line became increasingly dominant in Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s painting. Dots could disappear almost completely, leaving the composition to be constructed from painted lines laid directly across the canvas.

These lines vary enormously. Some are relatively controlled, forming looping grids and interlocking networks. Others are broad, rapid and highly gestural, sweeping across earlier marks and repeatedly crossing one another. In the later examples, the individual brushstroke becomes increasingly important: its width, direction, transparency, pressure and the physical reach of Emily’s arm remain visible.

Many of these paintings are associated with anwerlarr or pencil yam, particularly its spreading underground root system. The most celebrated expression is Anwerlarr anganenty (Big Yam Dreaming), 1995, but the approach was not confined to black-and-white yam paintings. Emily explored the same language using pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and white, sometimes against a dark ground and sometimes building colour so densely that little ground remains visible.

There is also considerable variation within the group. In some works the lines create clearly defined networks; in others they become tangled masses of overlapping strokes. By 1996, paintings such as Merne (Everything) and Untitled (Wild Yams) show line becoming increasingly loose and physical, approaching the broad gestural brushwork of her Final Series.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled – Yam Series, 1995, with an energetic network of broad pink, white, yellow and ochre lines crossing and looping over a black ground.

Untitled – Yam Series (1995)

Size
122.5 × 92 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher~Menzies, Fine Aboriginal Art and a Collection of New Ireland Malagan Sculptures, Melbourne, 27 June 2000, Lot 15

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore, Northern Territory; Private Collection, Sydney.

Price Realised
$33,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled (Wild Yams), 1996, with a dense tangle of sweeping pink, white, orange, red and ochre brushstrokes layered across a dark ground.

Untitled (Wild Yams) (1996)

Size
152 × 122 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Smith & Singer, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 24 August 2022, Lot 57

Provenance
Emily Kngwarreye, Alice Springs; Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs, commissioned from the artist; Private Collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above in 2012.

Price Realised
$300,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled, 1996, composed of vigorous overlapping pink, red, orange, yellow and pale brushstrokes sweeping in different directions across the canvas.

Untitled (1996)

Size
121 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Smith & Singer, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 8 April 2025, Lot 37

Provenance
Emily Kam Kngwarreye, Alice Springs; Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs (stock no. 96A12), commissioned from the artist; Private Collection, Sydney; Private Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above.

Price Realised
$285,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Yam Dreaming, 1995, with broad looping and intersecting lines of ochre, pink, mauve, yellow and white covering a dark ground.

Yam Dreaming (1995)

Size
153 × 178 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Mossgreen Auctions, Fine Australian & International Fine Art – Day 1, Melbourne, 29 August 2016, Lot 13

Provenance
DACOU Aboriginal Art Gallery, Adelaide; Patrick Torres, South Australia; Private Collection, Sydney; Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne; Private Collection, Perth.

Price Realised
$84,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Kame Colour XII, 1996, with sweeping and overlapping pink, white, red, ochre and cream brushstrokes moving across a dark ground.

Kame Colour XII (1996)

Size
152.5 × 91.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Aboriginal + Oceanic Art Auction, Melbourne, 25 May 2016, Lot 35

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, via Alice Springs; Don and Janet Holt, Northern Territory; Private Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised

$95,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled, 1995, with long horizontal brushstrokes of white, grey, pink and brown sweeping across a vivid orange ground.

Untitled (1995)

Size
152 × 120 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Aboriginal + Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 6 October 2010, Lot 38

Provenance
Commissioned by Rodney Gooch in June 1995; Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney; Private Collection, Sydney.

Price Realised
$34,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Yam Dreaming, with a dense network of sweeping green, pink, white, yellow, red and ochre brushstrokes crossing a blue ground.

Yam Dreaming

Size
93 × 61.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Menzies, Important Australian & International Art, Melbourne, 29 March 2023, Lot 51

Provenance
Dacou Aboriginal Art, South Australia. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.

Price Realised
$30,000 AUD

Dual coloured lines

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled, 1995, with broad white lines looping, curling and intersecting across a stark black ground.

Untitled (1995)

Size
149 × 229 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 24 June 2002, Lot 97

Provenance
Not stated in the supplied record.

Price Realised
$100,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled (Yam), 1996, with a dense web of sweeping white and pale grey brushstrokes layered across a dark ground.

Untitled (Yam) (1996)

Size
151 × 122.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Twenty Important Women Artists + Selected Australian and International Fine Art, Melbourne, 10 November 2021, Lot 24

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Private Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised
$220,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Yam Awelye, 1996, with vivid blue lines sweeping, looping and intersecting across a deep black and blue ground.

Yam Awelye (1996)

Size
152 × 91 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian & International Art, Sydney, 29 August 2018, Lot 39

Provenance
Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, Alice Springs; The Holt Collection, Alice Springs; Private Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised
$45,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Bush Yam Dreaming, c. 1994, with a dense network of looping and intersecting white lines covering a dark blue-grey ground.

Bush Yam Dreaming (c. 1994)

Size
138 × 263.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher~Menzies, Fine Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 29 June 1999, Lot 43

Provenance
Not stated in the supplied record.

Price Realised
$64,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Anooralya Awelye, 1995, with broad cream-white lines crossing and looping into an irregular grid over a stark black ground.

Anooralya Awelye (1995)

Size
152 × 92 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 24 June 2002, Lot 93

Provenance
Not stated in the supplied record.

Price Realised
$30,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Bush Yam Dreaming, 1994, with a dense network of broad pale ochre lines looping, crossing and radiating across a black ground.

Bush Yam Dreaming (1994)

Size
92 × 121 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Lawson~Menzies (now Menzies), Aboriginal Fine Art, Sydney, 23 May 2007, Lot 124

Provenance
Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Cat. No. 5610; Private Collection, Victoria. Sold with original gallery documentation and photographs of the artist with the work.

Price Realised
$34,000 AUD

Combined lines and lines of dots

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Merne (Everything), 1996, with sweeping pink and red brushstrokes layered among bands of yellow, pink, blue, white and ochre dots across a vivid multicoloured ground.

Merne (Everything) (1996)

Size
122 × 213 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian & International Fine Art, Melbourne, 15 July 2020, Lot 84

Provenance
The Peter and Renate Nahum Collection of Aboriginal Art, London. Accompanied by a Delmore Gallery certificate of authenticity.

Price Realised
$275,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s My Country, 1995, with parallel wavy brown bands separating loosely painted fields of cream, pink, ochre and green marks.

My Country (1995)

Size
126 × 95.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Lawson~Menzies (now Menzies), Modern, Contemporary Australian and Important Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 25 September 2008, Lot 286

Provenance
Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Melbourne (Cat. No. 5378), accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and photographs of the artist with the work; Private Collection, Melbourne.

Price Realised
$18,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Kame Colour, 1995, with bold white looping and compartmented linear forms surrounded by evenly spaced white, cream and ochre dots on a black ground

Kame Colour (1995)

Size
120 × 90 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, New York, 13 December 2019, Lot 17

Provenance
Painted at Delmore Downs Station, Northern Territory, in July 1995; The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands.

Price Realised
$20,000 USD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Untitled, 1995, with flowing rows of cream, white and pink dots interspersed with broad ochre, yellow and orange brushstrokes.

Untitled (1995)

Size
122 × 91.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Auction
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Aboriginal & Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 27 March 2013, Lot 6

Provenance
Private Collection, Donald Holt, Delmore Downs Station, Alice Springs. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Delmore Gallery.

Price Realised
$35,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s My Country, 1994, with horizontal bands and rows of ochre, yellow, mauve, blue and green dots and brushstrokes flowing across the canvas.

My Country (1994)

Size
119 × 90 cm

Medium
Acrylic on linen

Auction
Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art), First Nations Fine Art Auction, Sydney, 18 November 2025, Lot 17

Provenance
Delmore Gallery, Northern Territory (Cat. No. 94H079); Don & Janet Holt Collection, Victoria; Private Collection, Queensland. Accompanied by a Delmore Gallery certificate of authenticity.

Price Realised
$80,000 AUD

Final series

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s My Country – Final Series, 1996, with broad blocks and sweeping areas of vivid pink, blue, orange, yellow, green and purple paint.

My Country – Final Series (1996)

Size
127 × 82 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

Auction
Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art), Indigenous Fine Art Auction, Sydney, 20 October 2020, Lot 26

Provenance
Dacou (Dreaming Art Centre of Utopia), South Australia; Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Victoria; Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Victoria; Art Mob, Tasmania (cat. no. AM12242/16); Private Collection, Tasmania. Accompanied by a photograph of the artist creating the work.

Price Realised
$350,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Final Series, 1996, with broad translucent strokes of orange, salmon and pale pink forming large overlapping fields of colour.

Final Series (1996)

Size
45 × 60 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

Auction
Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art), Indigenous Fine Art Auction, Sydney, 20 June 2023, Lot 36

Provenance
Dacou Gallery, South Australia (Cat. No. 993 AS21); Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Victoria; Private Collection, New South Wales. Accompanied by a photograph of the artist creating the work.

Price Realised
$200,000 AUD

Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s My Country, 1996, with broad cream, pale blue, ochre and earthy red brushstrokes arranged in large overlapping blocks of colour.

My Country (1996)

Size
55.5 × 76.5 cm

Medium
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

Auction
Mossgreen Auctions, Spinifex and Sand: The Tony Norton and Jann Williams Collection of Aboriginal Fine Art, Melbourne, 4 April 2016, Lot 29

Provenance
Dacou Gallery, Adelaide (SS1197163); Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne (FG010024.EK); Private Collection, Melbourne; Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 26–27 July 2010, Lot 130; Spinifex & Sand Collection, Tasmania.

Price Realised

$117,500 AUD

About This Artist Value Page

The headline auction statistics at the top of this page — including the number of works offered, sale rate, highest recorded sale and median sale price — are calculated from the auction records reviewed for this artist.

Everything below those figures should be regarded as a curated and subjective selection rather than a complete record of the artist’s auction history.

This is not a database of works sold. For comprehensive Australian art auction records and market data, I recommend the Australian Art sales Digest

I select works primarily to show the variety, development and quality of an artist’s work. I favour works with good-quality images over those represented by small or poor auction photographs, and I naturally include paintings that I find particularly interesting or useful in understanding the artist. Although I try to choose representative examples from different periods, subjects, sizes and price levels, these choices inevitably introduce bias.

The highest auction results also require caution. An artist’s three, four or five strongest results may be for exceptional works that entered Australian or international public collections or attracted unusually strong institutional and collector competition. Such prices should not automatically be regarded as representative of the broader market for that artist.

These pages are part of my continuing education in Aboriginal art and are intended primarily for people who enjoy the art and want to explore the variety and evolution of an artist’s work. Apart from the headline auction statistics, the selection, commentary and interpretation on this page are subjective and should not be relied upon for valuation, investment, insurance, taxation or other commercial purposes.

All images featured in this article are presented strictly for educational and informational purposes.

This website may include copyrighted material for which specific authorization has not been obtained from the copyright owner.

All such images are presumed to be the intellectual property of the respective artist or their estate, and are used in accordance with principles of fair dealing or fair use under applicable copyright law.

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