Jenni Kemarre Martiniello

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello (born 1949) is an Australian Aboriginal (Arrernte) glass artist. She is best known for making glass vessels inspired by woven forms traditionally made by Indigenous peoples. She is also known for her advocacy for and support of Indigenous artists.

Early life Martiniello was born in Adelaide, Australia. Her father was of Aboriginal and Chinese descent, and her mother, a mezzo-soprano and accomplished pianist, was of Anglo-Celtic descent.

Martiniello had an early interest in art. While in high school, she took night classes at the Adelaide School of Art. However, after she graduated from high school, she decided to join the navy. She spent two years in the service, first as a radar plotter and later as a weapons assessor. She eventually left, dissatisfied with the way service members were treated. She then met and married her husband, an Italian migrant, and they settled in Canberra in the late 1960s. The two had multiple children together, but ended up getting a divorce ten years into their relationship. She was also able to watch women, including her Arrante grandmother, weave items such as eel traps, fish traps, dilly bags, bicornual baskets, and message sticks.

Martiniello combines this childhood inspiration with her newer knowledge of glass, using the Venetian technique of canework to imitate woven forms in glass. She experiments with colours to achieve a palette with references from the Australian landscape. She works with a team of people to realise her pieces, which continues a practice common among glass artists and also parallels Indigenous weaving circles. In both cases these groups of artists pass knowledge and skills down to the younger generation through demonstration and experience. The Australian award is the most prestigious prize for Indigenous art. The piece was inspired by woven fish traps from northeast Arnhem Land and Cape York, and took a team of seven artists to make.

Other selected awards and honors include the Canberra Critics Circle Award for Visual Arts (2011, 2013), the Wollotuka Acquisitive Art Prize (University of Newcastle, 2012), the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Visual Arts Fellowship (2013-2015), and the Bay of Fires Art Prize (2016).

She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2022 Queen's Birthday Honours.

Her work is in several major collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the Canberra Museum and Gallery, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Australian Parliament House Collection, the National Art Glass Gallery, the Belau National Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, and the British Museum.