Roseanne Morton Petyarre / Anwekety (Bush Plum) Dreaming (RM834)

Roseanne Morton Petyarre is a rising talent in the world of contemporary Aboriginal art. Born in 1984 at Atneltye (Boundary Bore), in the Utopia region approximately 280km north-east of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Roseanne was raised in a traditional way and attended school locally so she could remain close to her family and community.

She comes from a renowned family of artists. Her late mother, Gracie Morton Pwerle, was a highly respected artist and a senior custodian of the Anwekety (Bush Plum) Dreaming. Gracie began painting in the 1980s on batik alongside her mother, Myrtle Petyarre, and her sisters — Roseanne’s aunties — Gloria, Kathleen, Violet, Nancy, and Ada Bird Petyarre. All are internationally celebrated artists whose work helped bring the Utopia region to global attention.

From a young age, Roseanne absorbed the cultural knowledge and artistic skills passed down through her mother, aunties, and grandmothers. She paints the Anwekety (Bush Plum) Dreaming, just as her mother did — a story of deep cultural significance involving ceremony, ancestral connections, and the seasonal cycles of this important bush food.

Roseanne’s paintings are composed of flowing brushstrokes that depict the bush plum leaves scattered across Country. The layered movement and colour variations in her work represent the shifting stages of the plant’s life cycle — from the fruiting of the bush plum to the changing colours of its leaves throughout the seasons.

Roseanne lives at Utopia with her husband, Papunya artist James Morris, and their two children. Gentle and immensely talented, she is proudly continuing the artistic traditions of her family and community. With her strong cultural foundation and growing recognition, Roseanne is poised for a long and successful career.

In this painting, Roseanne Morton Petyarre depicts Anwekety, the Bush Plum Dreaming, an important story passed down to her by her late mother, renowned Utopia artist Gracie Morton Pwerle.

Anwekety is a small native fruit found throughout the Utopia region and an important traditional bush food. After good rain, the plants flower and produce fruit, which is gathered by women and children as it ripens. Knowledge of where the plants grow, when they are ready to harvest and how to find them across Country has been passed between generations, together with the songs and ceremonies associated with the Bush Plum Dreaming.

Roseanne has painted the story from an aerial perspective, looking down upon Country as though travelling across the landscape. The network of lines moving through the composition represents pathways followed by the women as they travel between areas where the bush plum grows and come together to gather the fruit. The densely layered fields of fine dots evoke the abundance of Anwekety across Country and the changing appearance of the plant as it flowers and fruits.

This approach continues a painting tradition closely associated with her mother, Gracie Morton Pwerle, whose Bush Plum works used delicate layers of colour and dotting to express the seasonal life of the plant and the Country to which the Dreaming belongs.

The painting is about much more than the gathering of a bush food. Anwekety connects people with Country, family and cultural knowledge, encompassing the places where the plant grows, the journeys made to collect it and the ceremonies through which its story is honoured and maintained.

In painting this Dreaming, Roseanne carries forward knowledge entrusted to her by her mother and continues an important cultural and artistic tradition into the next generation.