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Dancing at Christmas

Town Camp Designs is a collection of products created by Ewyenper Atwatye, Tangentyere Artists and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists.


We are a 100% Aboriginal owned and run art centre. All sales directly support the artists, with all profit going towards artists fees and future projects. 

This beautiful silk scarf features a reproduction of an original artwork by Grace Kemarre Robinya of Tangentyere Artists.

Grace says of the work:

This is Christmas time. Everyone dancing – kids dancing, and men and women dancing, and little boys and girls dancing together. Big Christmas Tree covered in different coloured baubles, you know kids they love to see Christmas trees? Pretty one! Even animals are dancing here.

Grace is a senior painter at Tangentyere Artists. Established in 2005, Tangentyere Artists operates as a not-for-profit enterprise. Tangentyere Artists is a hub for art activities across the Town Camps (the name describing 18 Alice Springs Aboriginal housing associations), including the internationally renowned Yarrenyty Arltere Artists, located at Larapinta Town Camp.

Through their art, Town Camp Artists communicate stories about their families, identity and  lives. Their art practice aims to highlight the everyday experience of Aboriginal people in Central Australia. Through sharing  stories Artists place themselves in the national conversation, working towards understanding and reconciliation. Tangentyere is an Arrernte word that means coming together, working together.

Tangentyere Artists operates a studio, gallery space, and outreach program. As well as supporting Town Camp residents, we offer Indigenous artists visiting town from remote communities an open environment to create artworks and share artistic skills. Tangentyere Artists is committed to innovative, sustainable, fine art outcomes for Town Camp Artists.

Categories: Tangentyere Artists

Name: Grace Kemarre Robinya

Language: Arrernte, Luritja, Western Arrernte, Anmatyerr

Community: Alice Springs

Biography:

Grace Robinya was born and raised in Ntaria (Hermannsburg), her father was a Robinja with links to a series of sites along the Finke River, and her mother was an Ungkwanaka from Running Water (Irremangkere). Robinya has fond recollections of sewing and playing sport at the Lutheran Mission of Hermannsburg. At a young age Grace eloped with her husband, and says never looked back! She married and travelled to Coniston Station with her husband. There she had her children, surrounded by cousins and elders in the then thriving Aboriginal camp located near the then operating station. Her children claim as their father’s Country, Patty’s Well, on Napperby Station.

Grace Robinya’s non-figurative paintings have always been highly considered and labour intensive, and generally distinguished by very neat multi-layered dot work. However, since 2015, Robinya’s practice has focussed on figurative paintings, often near-miniatures, detail important locations and events in her life: her childhood at Hermannsburg Mission and surrounding Ntaria region, or visits to her beloved Irremangkere. She also records details of station life at Coniston and Napperby Stations, where she and her husband worked as a domestic, and ringer respectively, while raising their family.

A frequent return visitor to Laramba Aboriginal Community now established on Napperby Station, Grace Robinya also documents exciting football and softball carnivals in which her grandsons and granddaughters feature, playing for the winning Anmatyerr teams. These and other works detail life in the remote Aboriginal communities in which she has lived throughout her life.

Grace enjoyed great success in 2019 including as a Finalist in the Works on Paper category in the Telstra NATSIA Award, and along with a small group of five fellow artists in Tarnanthi at Art Gallery South Australia. The popularity of her detailed works continues to rise. In 2020 she was a Highly Commended Finalist in the 41st Alice Prize.

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