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.
