Steven Russell, a Bidjigal drawer, painter and weaver, was born at La Perouse Mission on the shores of Botany Bay, Sydney, on the 17th May, 1957. Russell’s mother, Esme Timbery is an award-winning shellworker who was still residing at La Perouse in 2007. Russell’s maternal side has long been associated with visual arts in the Sydney region – his great great grandmother, “Queen” Emma Timbery had her shellworks displayed in London in 1910, his cousin, Laddie Timbery, is a boomerang and shield maker who sells the family’s arts and crafts at Timbery’s Arts 'n’ Crafts in Huskisson on the NSW South Coast and at The Loop at La Perouse every weekend. His uncle, Joe Timbery, was a champion boomerang thrower who once threw boomerangs as a display for the young Queen Elizabeth during the Royal Tour of 1954 and his grandfather, Hubert Timbery, was born at the “Yaromah” figtree at Figtree (a suburb of Wollongong), NSW. This particular tree is a Timbery family birthing tree and is the subject of a public art mosaic depicting the Yaromah dreaming story at the site of the original tree.
Russell is an artist member of Boolarng-Nangamai Aboriginal Arts and Culture Studio in Gerringong, NSW and it is through this organisation that he completed Certificates I – IV of Aboriginal Art and Cultural Practices, a Diploma and Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts and a Statement of Attainment in Workplace Training and Assessment at the Wollongong West College of TAFE from 2000 to 2006. Boolarng-Nangamai has provided the space Russell has required to extend his arts practice from painting and drawing to weaving and in 2002 Wollongong City Art Gallery purchased two of his weavings, Hip Bag and Bait Trap, for their permanent collection. His drawings are intricately rendered memories of La Perouse in the 1960s and 1970s and he describes his paintings in a conversation with the author in 2007 as “landscape and abstract paintings that depict my country of Botany Bay.” Russell has participated in “South Coast Weavers” at the Long Gallery of the University of Wollongong in 2003, “Pallingjang II” and III in 2000 and 2002 at the Wollongong City Art Gallery and in 2006 and 2007 he was a finalist in the Parliament of NSW Indigenous Art Prize at NSW Parliament House in Sydney.
- Writers:
- Allas, TessNote:
- Date written:
- 2007
- Last updated:
- 2011
- Status:
- peer-reviewed
