FREDDIE TIMMS - KURRAJONG HOLE (OLD GREENVALE)
FREDDIE TIMMS
KURRAJONG HOLE (OLD GREENVALE), 1997
120 x 90 cm
natural earth pigments on Belgian linen
REGION
Bedford Downs, Warmun East Kimberley, WA
PROVENANCE
Narrangunny Art Traders, WA
Cooee Art Leven, 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 father’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 colonisation. However, his political nature is characterised by more intimate interpretations of the experience rather than overtly political statements. Freddie 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 one’s spiritual home.
EXHIBITED
Freddie Timms: My Country, May 2014, Cooee Art Leven, NSW
ARTIST PROFILE
