Molly Brown, Untitled, 152x122cm

• Aboriginal Artist - Molly Rose Brown-Hayes
• Community - Umoona-Coober Pedy
• Aboriginal Art Centre - Umoona Community Art Centre
• Catalogue number - 411-26
• Materials - Professional artist acrylic on Belgian linen
• Size(cm) - H152 W122 D2
• Postage variants - Artwork posted un-stretched and rolled for safe shipping
• Orientation - Painted from all sides and OK to hang as wished

Molly Rose Brown-Hayes was born in 1990 in Adelaide and was raised soon after in Umoona-Coober Pedy. At the age of four, following the passing of her mother, she became mute. Since then, she has lived in quiet residency at Umoona Aged Care, where she maintains independence driving her own vehicle, entering in and out of the facility of her own accord as opposed to her elder cohort. Her mother's people are Antakirinja Matu-Yankunytjatjara from Umoona-Coober Pedy, and her father's people are Yankunytjatjara from Mimili. Communication with the outside world occurs only in spoken fragments, shared with two trusted aged care staff. In July 2024, Molly enrolled as a member of UAC. While she initially attended the studio in person, she now primarily paints from her room, with UAC supplying materials. Her space is lined wall-to-wall with expansive works across linen, cardboard, and paper. Molly's statement has been pieced together through fragments relayed by her carers translated by fellow studio artist Pauline Lewis Parrott. Despite her chosen solitude and distance from peers her own age, her practice is dynamic, intuitive, and prodigious, drawing on an unconscious cultural inheritance, particularly from her father's Yankunytjatjara-Mimili lineage where her works bear striking affinities with visual languages associated with the Lands, despite her life being spent primarily within the urban environment of the larger township. She has shared with her trusted carer what she thinks about as she paints. Her current body of work represents the desert flowers and wildlife of both her parents' homelands.

Umoona Community Art Centre is Indigenous owned and governed, based in Umoona community at Coober Pedy in the north of South Australia. It was established in 2020 alongside the art centres of the neighbouring Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, with the aim of building sustainable employment pathways for artists. The artists wanted a permanent centre they owned and operated themselves, and opened their purpose-built studio in Umoona in early 2024. The community is diverse. Artists from different language groups across the central desert work alongside people who have always called Umoona and Coober Pedy home, more than thirty of them, aged from sixteen to seventy. They work in acrylic on linen, punu and carving, tjanpi weaving and ceramics, in a wide range of styles, with strong colour and energetic mark making.