11613974029

Published by on September 25, 2021

Status: Stock

Tote – Piggly Wiggly

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 Sally M. Mulda. Sally records the everyday, putting down her Town Camp stories on canvas. Pigglys Supermarket AKA ‘Piggley Wiggley’ is Sally’s local store and an Alice Springs icon on Gap Road. Pigglys has frequently appeared as a site in Sally’s paintings over the years.

Sally 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: Sally M Nangala Mulda

Language: Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Luritja, Yankunytjatjara

Biography:

Born at Titjikala, her parents from Erldunda and Aputula [formerly known as Finke] regions, she went to school at Amoonguna when her family moved there. Sally married and had her only child as a young woman, but lost both her husband and her baby daughter. After losing the use of her left arm in a childhood accident, Sally later faced the challenge of losing her sight in one eye. Widowed and without children, Sally lived with friends and extended family in Alice Springs for many years. Having never painted before joining Tangentyere Artists in 2008, from the outset Sally sought to record those interactions that constitute life for so many Aboriginal people today.

Initially Sally struggled with painting because of her compromised vision, but following surgery on her good eye, Sally grew in confidence to create her own rich and fluid figurative style that celebrates her place in the world. Sally loosely applies layers of colour in broad brush strokes to depict the world around her.

Of Sally’s domestic environment, a tap drips into a bowl for the dogs, children play, men and women sit in the shade occasionally playing cards, making punu and seed jewellery, playing with babies, celebrating important events, occasionally drinking, while ranges in the background pulse with the heat, or the stars shine in clear skies. Further afield, Sally explores life since the Intervention: camping in the riverbed in swags, Council rangers moving people on, police pouring out grog, or taking people off to sober up. Sally observes minutiae, such as the navy blue Northern Territory police uniform introduced in early 2012.

Sally records events she witnesses and experiences without any particular judgement. It is as it is. Her oeuvre represents a journalistic approach to local situations. This is especially pertinent in that many of her paintings include text that explains each scene in strong and simple language. This form of social commentary on the daily lives of Town Camp residents in Alice Springs represents an important catalogue of lived experiences, captured for posterity. As Sally explained about her many years living at Little Sisters Town Camp, located at the base of Mt Gillen, just south of Heavitree Gap, 'Us grownups sitting one side, all’a kids playing and making noise on the other, all’a dogs - big - little - all running round, making noise, all feeling good for home, you know?'

In 2011, Sally moved to Abbott’s Town Camp, located by the Todd River. Life is slightly different for her there, and as a result of the move, Sally’s paintings, some including text, continue to reveal more fascinating insights about life today in Central Australia. Sally was a finalist in the Telstra 2012 and 2018 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and was the winner of the 2011 'Rights on Show' Annual Human Rights Art Award. She was a finalist in the 2019 Sulman Prize, and in 2020 a Finalist in the 41st Alice Prize. Her work has been acquired by many private collections and several public institutions.

In 2018 Sally was invited to exhibit at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of ' The National 2019: new Australian art. She also held a sold out solo exhibition at Edwina Corlette Gallery in Brisbane, and exhibited in Tarnanthi at Art Gallery South Australia with a small group of five other artists from Tangentyere Artists.

© the artist / art centre