It's an eight-metre showstopper of tangled white on a black background, and there's nothing like seeing it in real life.
Thousands have walked past Emily Kam Kngwarray's Anwerlarr Anganenty (Big Yam Dreaming) over the years, in various galleries, and now it's finally in Canberra for the National Gallery of Australia's summer blockbuster.
It's among 84 works works showing Kngwarray's short but spectacular career.
Like all of her paintings, she created it cross-legged in the shade, using a long brush and often surrounded by multiple canvases, either still rolled or already painted.
Her descendants, some of whom were at the gallery on Thursday to open the show, remember her working from sunrise to sunset, a smiling, gentle woman who told endless stories, used bush medicine on those who were ill, and depicted the country all around her through brushstrokes and prodigious use of colour.
The exhibition is the first survey of Kngwarray's work to be held in a major institution since 2008, and gives a fresh perspective on her art practice.
Curators Kelli Cole and Hetti Perkins spent significant time in Kngwarray's community, hearing about her practice from those who remember her, and seeing her legacy in the work of today's artists.
"This exhibition is a reminder that the stories and places Kngwarray painted are enduring, the culture that informed them is very much alive," Ms Cole said.
Kngwarray was the ultimate late bloomer - a senior Anmatyerr woman who first took up a canvas in 1988, when she was around 74 years old, and didn't stop until her death eight years later.
In that time, she made around 3000 paintings, and became one of the most significant contemporary artists in the world.
Her works are held by multiple major public and private collections, and adorn living rooms from New York to London.
Among them is the Central Park apartment of the actor and comedian Steve Martin, who owns several Kgnwarrays and has loaned three for the exhibition.
He purchased one of them, Old Man Emu with Babies, just last year at Sotheby's in New York for around AU$1.14 million.
It hangs, luminously, among works from each year of her career, as well as a series of batiks she created about three hours north-west of Alice Springst Utopia on Alhaker Country, where Kngwarray lived and worked.
Also at the opening was the director of the Tate Modern in London, Maria Balshaw, who announced it would stage a similar exhibition in 2025.
"I think it will be a showstopper in London - it will be a once-in-a-generation 'I have to see this'," she said.
"She is one of the most important global artists of the 20th and early 21st century, and the northern hemisphere hasn't seen the full range of the practice. And we will be making it very clear to our visitors that this is a gathering of work that won't happen again, at least in this generation. And so it will be a must-see."
- Emily Kam Kngwarray opens at the National Gallery of Australia on December 2 and runs to April 28. nga.gov.au
