One of the most significant and established artists in contemporary Tiwi art, Timothy Cook began painting with Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association in the late 1990s and has since developed a distinctive artistic language grounded in ceremony and the ochres of his Country.

The name Jilamara itself refers to the ochre body-painting designs used in Tiwi ceremony—a visual language of lines, dots and forms through which identity, kinship and cultural knowledge are expressed. That the art centre shares this name speaks to the cultural foundations from which Cook’s practice has emerged.

During a visit to Jilamara in the Milikapiti community on Melville Island in May this year to film the portrait accompanying this exhibition, the communal nature of Cook’s practice became especially apparent. To encounter his work in its home context is to understand how deeply its making is embedded in the life of the art centre, the community and the surrounding Country. Ochres are gathered and prepared; stringybark is harvested, seasoned and flattened; knowledge of materials, seasons and place is shared.

Cook’s is a highly individual practice, yet its material and cultural foundations are inseparable from the broader ecology of Country and community.

The film accompanying Kurluwukari grew from this experience. More than a portrait of a practising contemporary Tiwi master, it offers New York audiences an insight into the processes behind the paintings: the preparation of bark and ochre, the importance of seasonality, and the conditions in which these works come into being.

Kurluwukari—meaning ‘circle’ in Tiwi language—takes its title from the recurring form that has become fundamental to Cook’s work. Across bark and linen, circles, dots and lines draw upon jilamara and his enduring engagement with Kulama, a Tiwi ceremony associated with coming of age, the yam harvest and the seasonal cycle.

This is D Lan Galleries’ second solo presentation of Cook’s work. Our first, at Melbourne Art Fair 2025, presented his new large-scale bark paintings for the first time. Kurluwukari builds upon that exhibition, bringing bark and linen together in New York to reveal the continuity and ongoing experimentation within Cook’s practice. The exhibition also coincides with a significant moment for Cook in the United States. The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, the major international touring exhibition drawn from the National Gallery of Victoria collection, opens at Portland Art Museum in September and includes Cook’s 2012 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award-winning work.The exhibition’s curator, Myles Russell-Cook, has contributed an essay to this exhibition catalogue, offering a broader perspective on Cook’s place within contemporary Tiwi art.

It is a privilege to present Kurluwukari in collaboration with Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association and to bring this important new body of work to audiences in the United States.

Vanessa Merlino