Sally M. Nangala Mulda lives at Abbott’s Town Camp, near the riverbed of the Todd River in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Born in Titjikala, 130 km south of Mparntwe, she went to school in Amoonguna. Her childhood wasn’t stable because she had difficulties with her vision and lost the use of her left arm due to an accident. Time went on, and Sally moved closer to town with her family, eventually settling in Mparntwe.
Sally is known for her figurative and naïve painting style. She uses bright colours roughly applied across the canvas to illustrate her world; from the ranges that surround Mparntwe in the background, to the trees, saltbushes, homes, waterholes, shops, figures and animals that populate each scene. Sally includes text in cursive script that is unique to her practice and acts as an introduction to the painting’s subject. She doesn’t mince her words; she is brutally honest about the presence of police, alcohol consumption, and people sleeping outside because they don’t have enough money to pay for a power card to connect electricity to their homes. She contrasts this with text about people doing everyday activities like shopping, sleeping and cooking food, indicating just how ingrained and ‘normal’ confronting situations such as a constant police presence are in her world. Her paintings are stories from her lived experience and from the many Town Camp residents who face the same social and political issues.
Early in her career, Sally struggled because of her compromised vision but following surgery she gained confidence and has since developed her own dynamic and fluid style. Many of her paintings are about the contact between the Indigenous community and the Northern Territory police. Sally paints these stories with pain, but it gives her a release to be able to share them. The NT Intervention, a 2007 Federal Government policy program that was brutal in its enforcement and roundly prejudicial in its targeting of Indigenous communities, dramatically changed the lives of First Nations Australians in Mparntwe and elsewhere. New laws and regulations, including restrictions on the sale of alcohol, were enforced, jobs were cut and employment programs were discontinued. This caused overcrowding in most Town Camps, which hasn’t improved. (1) Sally describes this increase of police presence: ‘More humbug from policeman. Why we not allowed to buy alcohol? Or drink it at home in our own place like everybody else?’ (2)
In the NT, your eligibility to purchase alcohol depends on your address. If you live in a remote or Town Camp community, you are not permitted to buy and consume alcohol. These restrictions tend to cause a lot of humbug for alcohol and other possessions within the town. Most of the time alcohol is consumed due to joblessness, homelessness, and the pain and grief that our people suffer.
Despite the hardship, Sally enjoys staying in Abbott’s Town Camp surrounded by her Luritja families. It’s her home away from home.
Sally fills the gallery walls with the stories most are not willing to tell – not with the intention to guilt an audience, nor with a conscious decision to be a political artist, but simply by painting what she experiences. These are her true stories.
Notes
(1) ‘The number of drinking spots around Alice Springs has spiralled and this has led to an increase in intoxicated people on the camps’. ‘Impacts of the NTER’, Review of the Northern Territory Emergency Response, Australian Human Rights Commission, 2008, retrieved 23 August 2018, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/northern-territory-emergency-response-review-board
(2) ‘Humbug’ is a term used by Aboriginal people to describe the act of constantly hindering a person or peoples for something they may or may not have to give away; interview between the artist and author, August 2018.
Sally M Nangala Mulda was born at Erldunda, then her family lived at Maryvale, now Tapatjatjaka (Titjikala Community), and currently resides in Mpwetyerre (Abbott’s Town Camp) by Lherre Mparntwe (Todd River).
Sally paints her stories, shared by many Indigenous Australians, with emotional and political honesty and humour. Her figurative paintings depict the lived experience of contemporary town camp life, cataloguing domestic scenes of cooking damper and talking story. Alongside these, Sally presents insights into life since the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention – police pouring out grog and unhoused people camping in the riverbed.
Sally began painting with Tangentyere Artists in 2008 and is now celebrated as a significant contemporary artist, known for her distinctive figurative and colourful painting style. Her work is held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank and the Utrecht Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art collections, as well as many private collections. She has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize (2021), Sir John Sulman Prize (2023, 2022, 2021, 2019) and Telstra NATSIAA (2024, 2019, 2018, 2012) and Highly Commended in the 42nd and 44th Alice Prize (2022, 2024). Sally and Yarrenyty Arltere artist Marlene Rubuntja were recipients of the 2022 ACMI + Artbank Commission and the resulting body of work is touring nationally.
Sally M Nangala Mulda
Tangentyere Artists, Alice Springs
Born Titjikala Region 1957
Languages Arrernte, Luritja, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
'Pay Day', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
2023
'Still Here: Living at This Town Camp, Painting at This Art Centre, Telling My Story', EDWINA CORLETTE, Brisbane
‘Desert Mob’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Convention Centre
‘Together Our Stories Are Stronger’, Merricks General Wine Store
‘Tangentyere Artists New Works’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Ngura Kutjupa Walytja Kutju (Different Countries, One Home)’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Alice Springs Always Was’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
2016
‘Tangentyere Artists: Town Camp Yarns’, Short Street Gallery, Broome
‘Our Selves, Our Stories - Town Camp Artist’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Desert Mob 2016’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Convention Centre
‘Arrweketye Mob’, Ewyenper Atwatye Artists, Hermannsburg Potters and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists at Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Recent Works’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Mamie & Sally’, Portland Museum of Modern Art, Portland, Oregon, USA
2015
‘Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art’, Tandanya Cultural Centre, Adelaide
‘Making Place, Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art’, Art Gallery South Australia
‘SELFIES 2 l Town Campers’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Desert Mob - 25 Year Commemorative Exhibition’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Convention Centre
‘We are in Wonder LAND: New Experimental Art from Central Australia’, NIEA, University of New South Wales Galleries
‘Desert Dreaming featuring Artworks from 6 Art Centres from Central Australia’, Art Images Gallery, Norwood, South Australia
2014
‘Figuratively Speaking: Town Camp artists tell their stories’, Aboriginal and Pacific Art Gallery, Sydney
‘Selfies: Representation of Self by Town Camp Artists’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Desert Mob 2014’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘In support of Artists in Black’, Arts Law Art Auction Fundraising Event, Sydney
‘8th Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Convention Centre
Touring Exhibition of Aboriginal womens art of the Central and Western Deserts from the Sims Dickson Collection Strong Women Strong Painting Strong Culture
‘New Works: Salon Show’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Healing Ways: Art with Intent’, DAX Centre, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria
Seoul Open Art Fair, Desart Members Exhibition, Seoul, South Korea
‘RightNow’, Boomali Cooperative, Sydney
‘Tangentyere Artists, A Survey’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
2013
‘A Survey of Works’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘New Work by Tangentyere Artists’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Family Trees - Mbantua Festival Exhibition, Curated by Hetti Perkins – Desart Art Centres’, Alice Springs Telegraph Station & Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Tangentyere Artists - Open Day of New Art Centre’, Tangentyere Artists Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Desert Mob’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Tangentyrere Artists’, Central Craft, Alice Springs
‘Our Way, Their Way’, Raft Art Space, Alice Springs
‘Margaret Boko and Sally Mulda’, Merenda Fine Art Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
‘Ghost Citizens: Witnessing the Intervention’, curated by Jo Holder and Djon Mundine OAM, Cross Art Projects Gallery
2012
‘Town Camp Art – Tangentyrere Artists’, Short Street Gallery, Broome
‘THREE’, co-curated by Shauna Tilmouth, CHAN Contemporary Art Space, Darwin
‘Tangentyere Artists: Recent Paintings’, William Mora Gallery, Melbourne
‘Human Rights Film Festival’, Olive Pink Botanic Gardens, Alice Springs
‘Songlines – A Cooee Christmas’, Cooee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Sydney
‘Ghost Citizens: Witnessing the Intervention’, curated by Jo Holder and Djon Mundine OAM, Cross Art Projects Gallery
‘Desert Mob’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Convention Centre
‘Alice Springs Beanie Festival’, Araluen Art and Cultural Centre, Alice Springs
‘Alice Desert Festival’, HUB Space, Alice Springs
‘Tangentyere Artists’, Merenda Gallery, Perth
2011
‘The Lighthouse Murals - Darwin Festival Park’, Harry Chan Avenue
‘Tangentyere Artists’, Kate Ownen Gallery, Sydney
‘Tangentyere Artists’, William Mora Gallery, Melbourne
‘Tangentyere Artists’, Bond Gallery, Adelaide
‘Our Homes: Town Camp & Beyond’, Japingka Indigenous Fine Art Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
‘Human Rights Film Festival’, Olive Pink Botanic Gardens, Alice Springs
‘Desert Mob’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Convention Centre
‘Singapore Urban Aboriginal Art – A Survey’, ReDot Fine Art Gallery
2010
‘Tjintu Kutjupa’, Mossenson Gallery, Melbourne
‘Desert Mob’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Entertainment Centre
‘Coming Together’, Peta Appleyard Gallery, Alice Springs
‘Art From the Heart of Town Camps’, Outstation Gallery, Darwin
2009
‘Desert Mob’, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs
‘Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’, Darwin Entertainment Centre
‘Anwernekenhe Ayeye’, Japingka Indigenous Fine Art Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
‘Town Camps and Coloured Mission Blankets’, Japingka Indigenous Fine Art Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
‘My House - Central Australian Art Centre Show’, Birrung Gallery, Sydney
AWARDS
2022
Finalist, Sir John Sulman Art Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Finalist, Alice Prize National Contemporary Art Award, Araluen Arts Centre
2021
Finalist, Sir John Sulman Art Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Finalist, Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Finalist, Hadley's Art Prize, Hadley's Orient Hotel, Hobart
Finalist, Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, Brighton
2020
Finalist, King & Wood Malleson's Contemporary First Nations Art Award, Melbourne
Finalist, 41st Alice Prize National Contemporary Art Award, Araluen Arts Centre
Finalist, Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, Brighton
2019
Finalist, Sir John Sulman Art Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Finalist, Telstra NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
2018
Finalist, Telstra NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
2012
Finalist, Telstra NATSIAA,Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
2011
Finalist, Annual Human Rights Art Awards, Supreme Court Foyer, Darwin
COLLECTIONS
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Artbank Collection
Art Gallery of South Australia
Utrecht Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, The Netherlands
We are thrilled to announce that Sally M Nangala Mulda has been selected as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize with her work 'Amoonguna long time ago'.
We stay at Amoonguna long time ago. We went on the train to Maryvale.
Sally M Nangala Mulda’s work is a form of documentary storytelling. In this painting, she references a time in the 1960s when her family moved to Amoonguna Aboriginal Reserve about 15 kilometres east-south-east of Mparntwe/Alice Springs, so the children could attend school. Sally was born in the camp of Aboriginal stock and station homestead workers on Maryvale cattle station. That camp was recognised as Aboriginal Land in 1978, and the residents have transformed it into the idyllic Titjikala community within easy walking distance of the old homestead.
Arrernte and Southern Luritja artist Sally M Nangala Mulda alongside Arrernte and Western Arrarnta artist Marlene Rubuntja have developed their practice to be completely recognisable and representative of the place in which they live, Mparntwe/Alice Springs. Working from Tangentyere Artists and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists (art centres), these senior women have established themselves as two of Australia’s leading visual artists.
The third Artbank + ACMI Commission, Two Girls From Amoonguna, encompasses video, soft sculpture and paintings, with the centerpiece the animated work titled Arrkutja Tharra, Kungka Kutjara, Two Girls.
Arrkutja Tharra, Kungka Kutjara, Two Girls delves into the reality of First Peoples’ experiences in Central Australia by chronicling the artists’ successes and struggles. The work centres Sally and Marlene’s voices, as well as the voices of their younger family members, who can be heard in the animation. It was made in collaboration with Ludo Studio, the Emmy-award winning production company behind Bluey, Robbie Hood and The Strange Chores, along with script writer Courtney Collins, Left of Elephant Sound and Tangentyere Artists producer Ellanor Webb.
Figures from Marlene’s soft sculptures and Sally’s acrylic on linen paintings star in the animation, embedded on top of Marlene’s ink on paper works of the Central Australian landscape. Bringing together both artists’ practice, Sally’s iconic cursive painted lettering produce the subtitles.
Having grown up at the Amoonguna Settlement outside of Mparntwe/Alice Springs in the early 1960s, the two friends wouldn’t reconnect until much later in life, after both of them had seen their fair amount of hardships; now having achieved so much, they are immensely proud of one another.
Two Girls from Amoonguna is an exhibition about two of Australia’s leading artists and their journey to get there.
Sally M Nangala Mulda’s work is a form of documentary storytelling. She started painting in 2008 and has frequently portrayed town camp life since the 2007 Northern Territory intervention: people camping in the riverbed in swags, council rangers moving people on, people cooking kangaroo tail down the creek. Her practice represents an important catalogue of lived experience of town camp life and colonisation.
Congratulations to Sally M Nangala Mulda who is a finalist in the 2022 Sulman Art Prize.
The Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist.
Sally Mulda's painting 'Old Days at Amoonguna' depicts the art centre's toyota picking up all the woman for painting. That kungka Nadine driving. Long time ago I use to get picked up at Little Sisters. Now Abbott’s Camp. Every day. We listen to CAAMA radio. Good ways. Everybody talkin’ talkin’. This one [middle] – three woman, they on the hospital lawn, playing card for money. Pay day. Night time [right panel] four woman by the fire at town camp. They sitting round the fire at night time. Keeping warm, talking story. Maybe they by the fire because no power card? This is town camp life. Every day.
This open competition is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW. Finalists are displayed in an exhibition at the Gallery (although in the early years all entrants were hung). Although it is a non-acquisitive prize, several of the entries are now part of the Gallery’s collection.
Born in Titjikala in 1957, Mulda experienced a childhood accident that left her with impaired vision, but surgery has improved her sight. Exhibiting since 2008, she creates bright canvases with distinctive cursive text, depicting scenes of everyday life within Abbott’s Camp and drawing attention to social and political issues with emotional honesty.
In this portrait, the artist is wearing the stripey top and sits with her daughter, Louise Abbott. The other two people cooking roo tails on the fire represent all town camp women. As Mulda puts it: they are ‘maybe me and Louise, maybe any womans. This is town camp life. Every day.’
Mulda is also a finalist in this year’s Sulman Prize.
Established in 2015, the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize is a celebration of contemporary Australian painting. The finalist exhibition brings together a broad range of artists, both established and lesser known, whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of painting in Australia today.
The annual prize is an important opportunity for Bayside City Council to add exceptional works of art to its collection and to promote art and artists as a valuable part of the Bayside community.
Sally Mulda's work 'Town Camp Stories' 2020 is a finalist in this year's prize.
Sally Nangala Mulda has been selected as a finalist in the 2019 Sulman Prize, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist.
Sally says of her working this years prize:
This is me outside my home at Abbott’s Town Camp in Alice Springs feeding my cats. Little cat, mother cat. One woman, my family, playing cards. Nobody bothering anybody. No papa bothering the cats! We are just sitting quietly. I like quiet. Nobody talking.
Sally M Nagala Mulda, 2019
Image: Sally feeding little cat, mother cat, acrylic on linen, 76 x 92 cm
Louise Martin-Chew writes about Sally Nangala Mulda's life and painting for Art/Edit magazine. She says:
'WHAT IS MOST DISTINCTIVE about the paintings of Sally M. Nangala Mulda is that they tell us just how it is to live in Abbott’s Town Camp, not far from the mostly dry Todd River bed in Alice Springs (Mparntwe). Many of the paintings produced by Indigenous artists working out of the region use colour and pattern to evoke the romance of their connections to Country. However, Sally’s approach delivers the gritty reality of the place in which she lives, the interactions between police and Aboriginal people, the supermarket as the source of “a feed”, the tension around alcohol consumption and people sleeping rough, all set amongst saltbush, waterholes, homes and shops.'
On Sally Nangala Mulda's work for 'The National' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Snack Syndicate for Running Dog writes:
'Sally Mulda’s narrative style mimics the pedantic, forensic language of the state while at the same time showing that such language tends to obfuscate its subjects—people who live and die. Mulda’s frank descriptions of the Town Camp index the countless different ways that black life is both constrained by, and always in excess of, white law.
Together, the paintings in the exhibition are quietly unsettling, staging a series of encounters that produce both minor affects (annoyance, confusion, amusement, affection) and their major implications. Engaging with the paintings, we feel the enormity of living under occupation, as well as the conviction that such enormity can never be total.'
Curator Isobel Parker Philip talks about Sally Mulda's work for 'The National' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales:
'Sally Nangala Mulda is an artist who lives in Abbott's Town Camp in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
She paints scenes from her daily life. She paints people having breakfast. She paints going to the football. She paints people going to sleep. She also paints the routine and intrusive presence of the police amongst the indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.
All of these scenes are painted with the same frank and stark honesty. There is a normalisation of the police presence amongst the Indigenous community that is shocking to see at first and is amplified by the regularity with which Sally paints it and that we see it again and again across the installation.
This reminds us about what life looks like for a huge portion of our Indigenous people. In this work we see the lived effects of the 2007 Northern Territory intervention. It's a brutal reminder about what reality can really look like.
Sally paints her figurative scenes and then applies text on top of them to tether each work to a particular time and place. These are diaristic documents. They're paintings that do the job of photographs or snapshots. There's a kind of direct relationship between these scenes and the real world. We read them as snapshots. We read them as kind of episodes from life as it is lived.'
This is us, this is the way it is – that’s what Sally Mulda’s paintings of life seem to say. Paddy wagons in the river, policemen pouring out grog, an assortment of bottles and cans lying on the ground; four disconsolate people, probably men, walking away. Dogs, children sleeping and everything in between that makes up life in the Alice Springs Town Camps, are depicted in her paintings, raw and free.
SALLY NANGALA MULDA AT THE ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES FOR 'THE NATIONAL'
