Born: 1931, Australia
Died: NA
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Another Indigenous Australian artist, Esme Timbery is known for working in a very different medium: shells. Born in 1931, she came from a long line of shellworkers; her great-grandmother, Queen Emma Timbery, often displayed and sold such pieces at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show. In 1910, her work was featured in an exhibition of Australian manufacturing in London. Esme began collecting shells when she was five, and grew up learning the art from her mother, grandmothers and aunts—a tradition carried on by her own daughter, Marilyn Russell. Despite this, it wasn’t until 1997 that Esme Timbery had her first exhibition, Djalarinji – Something that Belongs to Us, at Manly Regional Gallery and Museum.
Although the family had been selling their work at markets for generations, this represented a shift from the work being relegated to “craft” to now being elevated to “art”—a line that many artistic advocates have been working to erase for decades. Although originally encouraged by Western missionaries, it was also a distinctly Aboriginal medium, unlike the Indonesian batik or more universal painting of the Utopia artists. The materials used—Timbery’s pieces commonly had a cardboard box as a base and were sometimes topped with glitter—also made it easier to dismiss the medium as “art.”
Timbery went on to do commissions for the Sydney Opera House and Sydney International Airport, with her works held in major museums and featured at the Biennale of Sydney. She was the inaugural recipient of the Parliament of NSW Indigenous Art Prize in 2005, and even had a ferry named after her in 2022.