FREDDIE TIMMS - PUPPYDOG PLAIN (TRIPTYCH)
FREDDIE TIMMS
PUPPYDOG PLAIN (TRIPTYCH), 1996
150 x 270 cm (150 x 90 cm x3)
Natural Earth Pigments on Belgian Linen
REGION
Warmun, WA
PROVENANCE
Narrangunny Art, WA
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 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 one’s spiritual home.
EXHIBITED
Au Naturel, October 2019, Cooee Art Leven, NSW Bondi
CUSTODIANS OF PLACE, 23 May - 29 July 2022, 1 Denison St North Sydney
ARTIST PROFILE
