Gloria Petyarre was born circa 1942 and died in 2021. Her place of birth was Mosquito Bore, Utopia, Northern Territory and her language was Anmatyerre. She predominantly lived at Mulga Bore (Akaye Soakage) with her husband.
She was one of seven sisters who are all artists, including the well-known Kathleen Petyarre, Nancy Petyarre, Violet Petyarre and Ada Bird. Gloria, like many of the Aboriginal women artists in Utopia, first gained recognition as an artist working with batik. Gloria exhibited her batik work in group exhibitions in Australia and overseas from 1977 to 1987.
In 1988, Gloria began painting in acrylic, painting her first work for the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA). This painting was shown in the exhibition “Utopia Women’s Painting; The First Works of Canvas; a Summer Project 1988 to 1989.” In 1990 and 1991, Gloria travelled to Ireland, London, and India as a representative of the Utopia women accompanying the group exhibition “Utopia – A Picture Story”.
The exhibition also travelled to Adelaide and Melbourne. The artwork of the Petyarre sisters share the same Dreamings, including Arnkerrth, the Mountain or Thorny Devil Lizard, Awelye, the women’s body design and stories related to a variety of bush foods.
Other exhibitions featuring Gloria’s paintings include the Aboriginal Women’s Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Flash Painting at the National Gallery of Australia, and The Body Paint Collection, which toured the USA. Besides painting, Gloria is also represented in tapestry, and in 1993 she was commissioned to make a tapestry for the Victorian (now Australian) Tapestry Workshop. In 1994, she received another commission for a tapestry to be made for the Law Courts in Brisbane.
More recently, she has developed her painting to higher levels of abstraction, continually experimenting with line and colour and they have focused on Bush Medicine Dreaming, which depicts the leaves of a particular type of shrub with powerful medicinal qualities. In the process of making their paintings the artists are paying homage to the spirit of the medicinal plant and encouraging its regeneration for its healing powers.
