Mrs Waal-Waal Ngallametta was a senior Cape York artist renowned for her large-scale paintings - artworks in which she mastered figurative scenes combined with meandering dotted patterns over bold ochre fields, and where she wove together a multitude of perspectives and stories in a glimmering fabric.1
Mrs Ngallametta's career was very short, but highly influential - she began to paint in 2008, and only created her large-scale canvases, for which she is nationally renowned, from 2010. Show Me the Way to Go Home is the first substantial publication on the work of Mrs Ngallametta, who passed away earlier this year. It will illustrate the artist's richly detailed, large-scale paintings from a selection of major public and private collections from around Australia, and feature photographs of the artist and her country.
One of Queensland's most esteemed artists, Mrs Ngallametta is remembered for her rich legacy to her community and to art and culture nationally. She won the General Painting category of the 2013 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. In 2018, the Australia Council for the Arts honoured her with a prestigious Red Ochre Award for lifetime achievement.
Published for 'Mrs Ngallametta: Show Me the Way to Go Home', an exhibition organised by the Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) and held at QAG, Brisbane, Australia, 21 March - 2 August 2020.
