FREDDIE TIMMS - MOAT CREEK YARD
FREDDIE TIMMS
MOAT CREEK YARD, 2007
122 x 135 cm
Natural Earth Pigments on Belgian Linen
PROVENANCE
Jirrawun Arts, WARaft Artspace, Parap, NTThe Jacquie McPhee Collection, WA
STORY
Moat Creek Yard is a mustering yard on Bow River Station, country belonging to the artist's family. The grey circle in the middle shows the stockyard where cattle are branded. Below the yard can be seen the waterhole on Moat Creek that flows into another creek. The small black circle towards the top of the painting represents a windmill bore. The light dark grey areas are all flat plains country. The white and lighter grey sections at the top edge represent hills and ranges. The two hills are depicted in the black on either side at the bottom of the painting. 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 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 oneā€™s spiritual home.
EXHIBITED
Last Tango in Wyndham, Raft artspace, NT Feb - March 2008
