Gloria was born c.1945, and is an Anmatyerre speaker, her country is Atnangkere and her Dreamings are similar to Ada Bird: Mountain Devil Lizard, Bean, Emu, Pencil Yam, Grass Seed, Small Brown Grass and more recently she has adopted the vibrant new style depicting the Wild Flowers, Bush Flowers and Bush Medicine Dreamings.

She first gained recognition as an artist working in the medium of Batik, exhibiting with the Utopia Women in shows around Australia and abroad for a decade (1977-87) before taking up the medium of canvas, painting her first work for CAAMA's Summer Project exhibition. She has six sisters who are also artists, and they include Ada Bird, Violet, Myrtle and Kathleen.

 

 

In 1990 she traveled to Ireland, London and India as a representative of the Utopia women, accompanying the 'Utopia: A Picture Story' exhibition (Tandanya, Adelaide, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin Ireland, and Meat Market Gallery, Melbourne, 1991). In 1991 she had her first solo exhibition at Utopia Art in Sydney. Her work is based on the body paint designs for her Dreamings, at first showing clearly the designs painted across the women's breasts and shoulders in the ceremony.

Since those early, highly distinctive works, she has developed her paintings to higher levels of abstraction, continually experimenting with line and colour. She says she prefers the greater freedom and control she finds with the medium of acrylic on canvas. Several of the works in her solo exhibition had no dots at all, but bands of different colour whose optical effects have evoked comparisons with the British artist Bridget Riley. Gloria's husband, Ronnie Price Mpetyane, started painting in 1989, and does strong men's paintings in dot style as well as neo-western landscapes in vivid colours. They live at Mulga Bore (Akaye Soakage) Utopia. Gloria has been painting for Mem Aziz, redrock gallery, in Melbourne since 1997.

Gloria's work is featured on the cover of “The Art of Utopia”, M. Boulter, and has been included in major exhibitions including 'Flash Painting' at the National Gallery of Australia in 1992, the 1991 Art Gallery of NSW touring 'Aboriginal Women's Exhibition', and solo exhibitions in 1991 at Australian Galleries, New York, Utopia Art, Sydney, and Desert Art Gallery Melbourne.

1988-2002 Utopia Art, Sydney
1989 Bloomfield Gallery, Sydney
Austral Gallery, St Louis, U.S.A.
Coventry Gallery, Sydney
1990 Tandanya, Adelaide
“Utopia”, exhibited in Ireland, U.K., India
Orange Regional Gallery
Third Eye Centre, Glasgow
1991-1996 S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney
1991 Meat Market Gallery, Melbourne
1991, 1994,1995 Art Gallery of N.S.W.
1991 Australia Galleries, New York, U.S.A.
1992, 1994, 1995,
1999 Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Melbourne
1992 Robert Holmes a Court Collection, Bangkok, Thailand
Gallery Rai, Tokyo, Japan

1992, 1994, 1996,
2000, 2002 Royal Exhibition Hall, Melbourne
1992 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
1993 Myra Morgan Gallery, Kansas, U.S.A.
Art Gallery of Queensland, Brisbane
Australia Gallery, St Louis, U.S.A.
Australian Embassy, Paris, France
1995 National Gallery of Australia – Canberra Museum of Art,
Gifu, Japan
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Mitchell Galleries, State Library of N.S.W.
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
1996 Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
1996, 2000 Old Parliament House, Canberra
1996, 1999 Sherman Galleries, Sydney
1996 William Mora Galleries, Melbourne
1997 Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Australian Galleries, Sydney
1998 Annadale Galleries, Sydney
Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs
1999 Art Gallery of Western Australia
Embassy of Australia, Washington, U.S.A.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, U.S.A.
Redrock Gallery, Melbourne
2000 Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane
Australian National University, Canberra
2001 Brisbane City Gallery
Manawatu Gallery, New Zealand
Kunst der Gegenwart, Vienna, Austria
“Icons of Australian Aboriginal Art”, Singapore
2002 Singapore Art Museum
Light Square Gallery, Adelaide
2002/03 National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square, Melbourne
Chapel off Chapel, Melbourne
2003 Glen Eira City Gallery, Melbourne

1997 - 2005 Redrock Gallery, Melbourne Vic.

2006 redrock gallery, Group Exhbition, Relocation Exhibition,South Yarra, Aust

 

Selected Collections:
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Museum of Victoria, Melbourne
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Art Gallery of Queensland, Brisbane
Art Gallery of N.S.W., Sydney
Flinders University, Adelaide
Griffith University Collection
Gold Coast City Art Gallery
Queensland University of Technology
Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Darwin
Supreme Court, Brisbane
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Westpac Gallery, New York, U.S.A.
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, U.S.A.
Robert Holmes a Court Collection
Mem Aziz Private Collection, Melbourne
Wollongong University Collection
Artbank, Sydney
Macquarie Bank
Singapore Art Musuem
British Museum, London, U.K.

1999 Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of N.S.W.
1993 Tapestry for Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne Vic
1993 Mural for Kansas City Zoo, U.S.A.
1994 Tapestry Commission for the Law Courts, Brisbane, Qld.
1997-2005 Mem Aziz Private Collection
1997-2005 Redrock Gallery, Melbourne Vic.

Janusz B Kreczmanski & Margo Birnberg, Aboriginal Artists Dictionary of
Biographies, J B Publishing Australia, South Australia, 2004

Vivien Johnson, Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert,
A Biographical Dictionary, Craftsman House, Roseville, N.S.W.
1994

 

 

 

 

 

 

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