Freddy Timms (1946,

Bedford Downs Station Bedford Downs, or Bedford Downs Station, is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in Western Australia. It is situated about west of Warmun and north of Halls Creek in the Kimberley region. Both the station and nearby Mount B ...

– 2017) was an Australian indigenous artist from the Kimberley region.

Life and art

Timms commenced painting on canvas in the 1990s at Turkey Creek /

Warmun Warmun Community (also known as Turkey Creek) and Warmun are a township and locality in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, located on the Great Northern Highway, northeast of Perth, Western Australia. The closest populated town is Hal ...

in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. In 2002, a controversy that came to involve Timms developed when writer

Keith Windschuttle Keith Windschuttle (born 1942) is an Australian historian and former board member of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was editor of '' Quadrant'' from 2007 to 2015 when he became chair of the board and editor-in-chief. He was the pub ...

argued that claims made by some historians about the killing of indigenous people by white landholders were false. Windschuttle'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 Windschuttle, were privileging

written history Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world his ...

(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 Windschuttle and others' claims, Timms and several other artists including

Paddy Bedford Paddy Bedford (circa 1922 – 14 July 2007), aka "Goowoomji", was a 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 Bra ...

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 The Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia was established in 1972. It houses the art collection of the University of Melbourne. Current director, Kelly Gellatly, was appointed in 2013. It is not to be con ...

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.

Nicolas Rothwell Nicolas Rothwell is a journalist and the Northern Australia correspondent for ''The Australian'' newspaper. He is also an award-winning writer with several works of non-fiction to his name. Background Rothwell is the child of Czech and Australi ...

, "A dream of a studio", ''

The Weekend Australian ''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatewat ...

– Review'', 21–22 July 2007, p. 9

References

External links

Cross Art Projects
Australian Aboriginal artists 1946 births 2017 deaths People from Warmun Community {{Australia-painter-stub

Life and art

References

Further reading

External links