Freddy Timms
Encyclopedia
Freddy Timms is a leading Australian Indigenous artist from the Kimberley region.
In 2002, a controversy that came to involve Timms developed when writer Keith Windshuttle argued that claims made by some historians about the killing of Indigenous people by white landholders were false. Windshuttle's arguments were part of a broader debate about Australian Indigenous historiography
and conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
. One argument put in this debate was that some authors, including Windshuttle, were privileging written history (which was at that time invariably recorded by white Australians) over oral histories of Indigenous people. These oral histories included accounts of a massacre of Indigenous people (including members of Timms' family) at a place called Mistake Creek. Angered by Windshuttle and others' claims, Timms and several other artists including Paddy Bedford
created paintings documenting the events recorded in their oral histories. These paintings were exhibited in Blood on the spinifex at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in 2003.
Timms collaborated with former gallerist Tony Oliver and others to create Jirrawun Arts, a company established to assist the development and sale of works by Indigenous artists from parts of the Kimberley. By 2007 the company had become one of a very small number of profitable, privately financed, Indigenous-owned and controlled businesses operating in the field of Indigenous art.
Life and art
Timms commenced painting on canvas in the 1990s at Turkey Creek / Warmun in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.In 2002, a controversy that came to involve Timms developed when writer Keith Windshuttle argued that claims made by some historians about the killing of Indigenous people by white landholders were false. Windshuttle's arguments were part of a broader debate about Australian Indigenous historiography
History wars
The history wars in Australia are an ongoing public debate over the interpretation of the history of the British colonisation of Australia and development of contemporary Australian society...
and conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
Black War
The Black War is a term used to describe a period of conflict between British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in the early nineteenth century...
. One argument put in this debate was that some authors, including Windshuttle, were privileging written history (which was at that time invariably recorded by white Australians) over oral histories of Indigenous people. These oral histories included accounts of a massacre of Indigenous people (including members of Timms' family) at a place called Mistake Creek. Angered by Windshuttle and others' claims, Timms and several other artists including Paddy Bedford
Paddy Bedford
Paddy Bedford was a major contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from Warmun in the Kimberley, and one of eight Australian artists selected for an architectural commission for the Musée du Quai Branly....
created paintings documenting the events recorded in their oral histories. These paintings were exhibited in Blood on the spinifex at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in 2003.
Timms collaborated with former gallerist Tony Oliver and others to create Jirrawun Arts, a company established to assist the development and sale of works by Indigenous artists from parts of the Kimberley. By 2007 the company had become one of a very small number of profitable, privately financed, Indigenous-owned and controlled businesses operating in the field of Indigenous art.
Reading
- Jeremy Eccles, 'New frontiers for Indigenous art: Jirrawun Arts, East Kimberley', Art Monthly Australia, no. 178, April 2005
- Jeremy Eccles, 'Jirrawun: A unique model for Aboriginal art', Art & Australia, vol. 44, no. 1, 2006
- D. Jopson, 'Landscapes in blood', Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 2002.
- Nicolas Rothwell, 'A dream of a studio', The Weekend Australian - Review, 21–22 July 2007, p. 9.