FREDDIE TIMMS - FOUR MILE PLAIN
FREDDIE TIMMS
FOUR MILE PLAIN, 1997
120 x 90 cm
natural earth pigments on linen
PROVENANCE
Bedford Downs, Warmun East Kimberley, WA
Narrangunny Art Traders, N.TCooee Art Gallery, NSW
STORY
Freddie Timms began painting in 1986, inspired by the elder artists already painting at Frog Hollow, a small outstation attached to the community at Warmun, Turkey Creek. Born at Police Hole c.1946, he followed in his fatherā€™s footsteps, following the stockman life at Lissadell Station. At the age of twenty, he set out to explore and work on other stations. It was during this time that he met and worked alongside Rover Thomas who was to have a lasting influence on him. In 1985, he left Lissadell once more to settle at the new community established at Warmun where he worked as a gardener at the Argyle Mine. In a career that has spanned more than 20 years Freddy Timms has become known for aerial map-like visions of country that are less concerned with ancestral associations than with tracing the responses and refuges of the Gija people as they encountered the ruthlessness and brutality of colonization. However, his political nature is characterized by more intimate interpretations of the experience rather than overtly political statements. Freddy Timms is foremost amongst those Gija artists of the second generation. His, is a unique Gija perspective on the history of white interaction with his people. It is hard to think of another who expresses more poignantly through their art the sense of longing and the abiding loss that comes from the separation from land that embodies oneā€™s spiritual home.
EXHIBITED
Passing On Tradition - New and Old Kimberley, June/July 2010, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art GalleryCaring for Country, Nancy Sever Gallery, 12 July - 3rd August 2014