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Chrischona Schmidt examines Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s role as painter in the community of Utopia and Gwen Horsfield looks at Australia’s participation at the Venice Biennale 1978-2007, where Emily was one of the featured Australian artists.

The National Museum’s Margo Neale and Dennis Grant welcome participants to the Emily Kame Kngwarreye symposium, for the exchange of cultural perspectives by Australian and Japanese speakers. Includes a welcome by Ngunnawal elder Agnes Shea.

Art writer and critic Susan McCulloch discusses the significance of Emily Kame Kngwarreye in twentieth-century Australian art, her contribution to its development and the stylistic breakthroughs of her work.

Art historian Chiaki Ajoika, Aboriginal art consultant Mayumi Uchida and Australian Embassy official Hitomi Toku discuss Japanese responses to the Osaka and Tokyo exhibitions of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s work, with Ronin Films managing director Andrew Pike.

Historian Ann McGrath discusses paintings as agents of history, bringing history into the present. She looks at the work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye to investigate how paintings tell different stories depending on where they are presented.

Art historian Terry Smith explores how Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s work operates between the evolution of Indigenous and non-Indigenous art in Australia. He draws comparisons with the achievements of contemporary European artists.

Art historian Ian McLean offers a view based on the Australian post-colonial experience, arguing that Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s form of modernism is different from international modernism in both source and history.

The art of Emily Kame Kngwarreye and the use of cultural rituals to demonstrate Aboriginal modernity is explored by curator Sally Butler. She also compares Emily’s art practices to 1970s and 1980s modernist design techniques.

Museum director and Emily Kame Kngwarreye exhibition curator Akira Tatehata explores the ironies of ‘the impossible modernist’ from another cultural space, as a Japanese man steeped in his own culture and an international art curator and academic.

Indigenous art curator Djon Mundine examines the art of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, drawing parallels with other late-style female artists to deepen the understanding of Emily and her work beyond the local perspective.