Grace Robinya, Ntaria [Hermannsburg] Sandhills, 60x56cm

• Artist - Grace Robinya
• Community - Alice Springs 
• Art Centre/Community organisation - Tangentyere Artists  
• Catalogue number - 7545-16
• Materials - Acrylic on linen  
• Size(cm) - H56 W60 D2  
• Postage variants - Artwork posted un-stretched and rolled for safe shipping

This is Ntaria Sandhill Country - Hermannsburg. This is the people's houses [lower half of the painting], my family living here, on Sandhill side, that's the north side. And the road running through the sandhills, all the tourists travelling. The Mission are over here [to the right, beyond the frame of the painting], down by the creek, the Finke River there.

Robinya was born and raised in Ntaria (Hermannsburg), her father was a Rubuntja from Mt Hay (Urre), and her mother was an Ungkwanaka from Running Water (Irremangkere). She married a Robinya, and her children claim as their father’s Country, Paddy’s Well, north of 20 Mile Waterhole on Napperby Station. Robinya has fond recollections of sewing and playing sport at the Lutheran Mission of Hermannsburg, but admits she eloped at only sixteen with her husband, and never looked back!

An artist and seed jeweler of many years standing, Robinya hot-wires and paints traditional patterns onto gum nuts, which she threads together with the Innernte (Batwing Coral) and other seeds she collects during winter. Robinya’s paintings have always been highly considered and are labor intensive, and generally distinguished by her, balanced colour schemes and symmetrical compositions.

More recently, Robinya’s figurative paintings, detail important locations and events in her life: her childhood at Hermannsburg Mission and surrounding Ntaria region, or visits to her beloved Running Waters. She also records details of station life at Napperby Station, 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 Staon, 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 Robinya has lived throughout her life.

Representing Aboriginal people from Town Camps, Tangentyere Artists is the only Aboriginal owned, not-for-profit painting studio and gallery in Alice Springs.

Figurative narrative paintings are the Tangentyere Artists’ signature style. By documenting sites and activities familiar to them, Town Camp artists afford their audience insight into their personal histories and everyday lives.

Accordingly, cultural and historical subject matter coexist with scenes of contemporary, urban life. This illuminates the artists’ intimate knowledge and negotiation of both worlds, a duality not well known or represented elsewhere.

The artists detail sites of cultural significance in country, the undertaking of cultural activity, scenes from outstations and recollections of pastoral experiences and mission days. Also represented are the day-to-day affairs of Town Camps; kangaroo tail cooking in the fire, children playing, families talking stories, drinking, playing cards and fixing cars.

Interactions with local police, service providers and townspeople are also intimately documented, with the backdrops revealing urban locations where people congregate, such as the Todd River bed or public lawns. Importantly, these scenes expose a complex temporal order and marginalised realities not well understood by mainstream consciousness.

The choice of subject matter and the way artists choose to illustrate it unwittingly challenges the orthodoxy of Aboriginal art. From behind the veil of more popular representations of Tjukurrpa emerge the actualities of everyday life for Aboriginal people in Central Australia.

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