Evelyn Pultara
Utopia – b.c.1940

Evelyn Pultara is an outstanding artist from the Utopia region of the Northern Territory. She was born some time around 1940 at Woodgreen Station, the cattle property adjoining Utopia Station. She is an Anmatyerre woman.

Like her late aunt Emily Kame Kngwarreye and her full brother Greeny Purvis, Evelyn Pultara was born with bush yam (pencil yam) as her ‘totem’. The bush yam (atnwelarr) has been an abundant source of food and water for the Anmatyerre people for countless years. The pencil yam is a slender twining plant with yellow pea flowers and edible tubers. As her totem, it is Evelyn’s responsibility to pay homage to it through song and dance in ceremony – and now in art. Evelyn is a shy, quiet woman who rarely gives away more than is necessary about the context of her paintings.

Evelyn’s husband Clem (also an artist) is more gregarious and quite happy to publicly sing the songs that accompany her paintings. “Always the same song, same story” he tells us, “but she found her own style, she makes paintings her own way”. One can imagine that as long as Evelyn is painting to the rhythm of a yam song and while she is in ‘yam dreaming’ frame of mind, then whatever flows forth onto the canvas is naturally to be called ‘Bush Yam’.

Awards: 2005 – Winner, general painting, Telstra, 22nd National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Award, Darwin, NT,

Collections:
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Exhibitions:
June 2003 Solo Exhibition, Sydney
May 2004 ‘Evelyn Pultara’ curated by Armida Allevi, abOrigena, Milan, Italy, London, Melbourne
Feb 2005 ‘The Art of Evelyn Pultara’, Sydney
2005 Raintree Gallery, Darwin NT

Group Exhibitions:
2004 Twenty Indigenous Female Artists From Central Australia, Ann Snell Gallery.
1993 Yapakurlangu Jirrama, Batchelor College, Tennant Creek, NT