Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an Aboriginal woman from Utopia in central Australia who began to paint on canvas when she was about 78 years old. The exhibition of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s paintings which toured to Osaka and Tokyo in 2008 is arguably the biggest, most comprehensive single artist exhibition to travel internationally from Australia. EMILY IN JAPAN is the story of the making of this landmark exhibition, with all of the complex cross-cultural transactions that were involved – from the red desert of central Australia where Emily lived, to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, where the exhibition was curated, and to the high end of the art world in Japan.