Emily Kame Kngwarreye Art Aircraft | BALARINJI Indigenous Design and Strategy

In 2018 Balarinji welcomed the fifth aircraft design in the Qantas-Balarinji Flying Art Series, Emily Kame Kngwarreye 787 Dreamliner. Balarinji created the fuselage design based on the internationally renowned artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s 1991 painting ‘Yam Dreaming’.

A Qantas-Balarinji art aircraft typically takes two years from concept to launch. Over that time, Balarinji worked with Qantas Engineering, Boeing and Boeing’s design agency, Teague, to take a 2-D vision into 3-D renders and eventually onto the aircraft fuselage in the Boeing paint facility in Seattle, USA.

Balarinji deconstructs an original painting and reforms it as a design that works around a fuselage, in a way that responds to the viewer from all angles – from the ground, from an air bridge, in the sky. Scale, colour, distribution of motifs and compatibility with Qantas branding and safety requirements are carefully considered.

Some simplification of a painting like ‘Yam Dreaming’ was necessary to make it possible for Balarinji to create a design for a ‘canvas’ the size of a 787 Dreamliner.

Emily Kngwarreye’s subtle layers of colour-blended dots is interpreted as a base colour gradient that stretches the length of the fuselage.

More than 5000 individual dots identical in shape and placement to the original painting, were meticulously applied to achieve the sight lines from the ground and the air of a faithful representation of the original painting. The colours draw from Emily’s palette, and reflect the Central Australian landscape of her birth and life. Best practice Intellectual Property management ensured the integrity of the art was preserved in translation.

The Emily Kame Kngwarreye Dreamliner was recognised for its design excellence in celebrating Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island art and culture and was awarded Gold in the Graphic Design – Identity and Branding category of the 2019 Sydney Design Awards.

'Yam Dreaming’

1991
Synthetic polymer on canvas
230 x 150cm

Emily Kngwarreye’s name Kame means seed of the yam (Vigna sp.), or wild potato, and is an ancestral name which identifies the artist with her country Alhalkere. A piercing in her nose where the yam seed was carried, embodies her identification with her ancestor of the same name, Alhalkere. While the maze of lines represent the arterial roots of the yam growing beneath the ground, they also reflect a similar pattern of crazed lines above the ground, which indicates the maturity of the edible yam tuber. It is along these cracks that one digs to obtain the matured yam, a staple food source in the desert. The yam is also culturally very significant and in this painting the life force of nature and ancestral power is evoked. Over the summer of 1990-1991 Emily produced her first paintings on canvas. This style became her signature style.

Every painting of Emily’s contains reference to her multiple Dreamings

When asked what she paints she declared: “Whole lot, that’s whole lot, Awelye (my Dreaming), Arlatyeye (pencil yam), Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard), Ntange (grass seed), Tingu (Dreamtime pup), Ankerre (emu), Intekwe (favourite food of emus, a small plant), Atnwerle (green bean), and Kame (yam seed). That’s what I paint, whole lot.”

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

(c.1910-1996)
Ancestral home, Alhalkere
Lived and worked at Utopia, Northern Territory
Anmatyerre language group
Photo Greg Weight. Courtesy of Qantas.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (PRON Emily Kummay N(g) (like “ng” in “ing”)-worray) was born in the early years of the Twentieth Century on her traditional country of Alhalkere (PRON Ull-hullkerra), a remote desert area around 230 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, near Utopia. A senior member of the Anmatyerre (PRON Un-muttcherry) clan, ceremonial leader and a custodian of Dreaming sites in Alhalkere, Kngwarreye was introduced to art late in life through a governmentfunded education program at Utopia and in 1978 became a founding member of the Utopia Women’s Batik Group. She began painting on canvas in 1988 and over the next eight years quickly garnered attention for her remarkable body of work that embodied her deep spiritual and cultural connections to her Country and community.