Freddy Timms Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1948 - d. 2017

Freddie Timms was given the bush name, Ngarrmaliny, after the place he was born at, Police Hole, around 1946 on the East Kimberley cattle station of Bedford Downs. Growing up on station properties, Freddie Timms learned all the riding and stock handling skills at an early age. He worked on most of the surrounding stations, including Bedford Downs, Lissadell, Mabel Downs, Old Argyle, Texas Downs and Bow River Station.

After the stockmen’s dispute in the seventies, which resulted in the removal of many Aboriginal people from their homelands, Freddie Timms lived in the Guda-Guda Community at Wyndham, after which he and his family relocated to Warmun/Turkey Creek in 1985. Bow River Station was eventually granted by the Government to the Timms family, with Freddie’s uncle, the late Timmy Timms, as Chairperson.

Freddie Timms and his wife Beryline Mung live at the tiny community of Frog Hollow where Freddie paints his stories. He started painting in the late 1980s, using the knowledge and techniques that he had acquired by working and talking with the best of the Aboriginal artists at Warmun, such as Jack Britten, Hector Jandanay, Henry Wambini, Rover Thomas and his father-in-law, Paddy Jaminji. Freddie Timms’ representations of country are mainly based on real topographical features rather than mythological ones, often focusing on the landscape’s history and changes since white settlement.

Japingka Gallery has exhibited Freddie Timms’ paintings and the artist’s work has been included in a number of exhibitions including –

Freddie Timms (Ngarrmaliny Janama) lived as a child on Bow River and Lissadell Stations, later working as a stockman, handyman and fencer on several stations throughout the East Kimberley. He knew Rover Thomas when they both worked at Bow River and Texas Downs and danced and help paint boards for early performances of Thomass Gurirr-Gurirr. When he was living at Frog Hollow, south of Turkey Creek, in the 1980s, Joel Smoker of Waringarri Arts brought canvases to Jack Britten, Rover Thomas, Hector Jandany and his father-in-law, George Mung-Mung. Timms asked for canvases as well and has not stopped painting since. He paints in a style reminiscent of Thomas but recognisably his own, with expanses of paint lined with white dots. Many of his pictures are like aerial maps of the bones of the country where he lived and worked all his life. Mapping is on a topographic level showing features of the landscape such as black soil, red ground, sandy ground, hills, creeks and water holes as well as a historical and spiritual level, showing roads, stockyards, homesteads and dreaming places. Much of the country where he worked on Lissadell, a frequent painting subject, is now under the water of Lake Argyle formed by the damming of the Ord River.

Freddie Timms is one of the few Aboriginal artists from a traditional background who, on occasion, seeks to make a political statement in his work. He began exhibiting at Watters Gallery through an introduction from Tony Oliver, whom he had met in Melbourne. Later, he and Oliver set up a corporation (now Jirrawun Arts), to market work on a consignment basis for an increasingly wide group of Kimberley artists, including Paddy Bedford, Rusty Peters, Churchill Cann, Goody Barrett, Phyllis Thomas and his father's brother Timmy Timms. He also helped initiate the Neminuwarlin Performance group with his aunt and lead singer and dancer Peggy Patrick.