Timothy was born in 1958 on Melville Island, Melville Island is part of the group known as the Tiwi Islands.
He has been painting, print making and carving through the Jilamara Arts & Crafts since 1999. He is one of the most recognized artists of his generation from the Tiwi Islands.
Living on Melville Island his whole life, he began his art practice there in the mid 1990’s, refining his works in the traditional ancestral dancing body paint, bark paintings and totem pole montifs of the ‘old designs’ passed down to him by his elders.
© Laterthanyouthink
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Laterthanyouthink
Timothy has transformed these ancestral designs into contemporary art, using natural ochres and painting with dots, cross hatching, lines, circular, cross motifs and moon motifs.
“I will take a painting to heaven so my mother will recognise me.”
– Timothy Cook
His art practice is very intimate, and is strongly connected to Tiwi ceremonies, his artworks give the viewer a peek into the strong history of the Tiwi Islands.
With his ceremonial themes depicting traditional Tiwi ceremony Kulama (yam ceremony) the Pukumani (funeral ceremony) and Purukapali, the great mythological Tiwi ancestral figure, whose cultural legacy is revealed in the geometric patterns common significant in all Tiwi art.
Timothy first exhibited his work in 1997.
His artworks are highly sort after for major collections both nationally and internationally.
Awards
- In 2012 he won the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award with a large kulama painting in luminous natural ochres, a work typical of his signature style.
- In 2018 Timothy’s work was selected for the inaugural King and Wood Mallesons Contemporary ATSI Art Prize.
Collections
- Aboriginal Art Museum
- Utrecht, Netherlands
- Art bank, Sydney
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
- Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
- Charles Darwin University, Darwin
- Corrigan Collection, Sydney
- Laverty Collection, Sydney
- Musée du Quai Branly, Paris
- Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
- National Gallery of Victoria
- Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
- Parliament House Collection, Canberra
- Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
- Wesfarmers Collection, Perth