Timothy Cook: Kurluwukari Opens in New York

One of the most significant artists in contemporary Tiwi art is having his first solo exhibition in the United States. It’s happening on the Upper East Side this September.

Timothy Cook: Kurluwukari opens at D Lan Galleries with an evening reception on Thursday, September 10, and runs through October 9, 2026.

Who is Timothy Cook?

Timothy Cook was born in 1958. He lives and works in Milikapiti, on Melville Island in the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin. He began painting with the Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association in the late 1990s. In the decades since, he’s built one of the most recognizable visual languages in Australian art.

He won the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2012. In 2023 a major Kulama painting was selected as a finalist for the Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

What Kurluwukari means

Kurluwukari means circle in Tiwi language, and the circle is the form at the heart of Cook’s work.

It comes from Kulama, a Tiwi coming-of-age ceremony held in the late wet season. It’s timed to the yam harvest and the appearance of a halo around the moon. The ceremonial ground is prepared in concentric circles. Cook has returned to it in his painting for more than thirty years.

As he puts it: “I paint Kulama.”

That repetition matters more than it might appear. Kulama is practiced far less often now than it once was. Cook’s generation remembers the ceremonies well. Younger Tiwi have had fewer chances to experience them. Painting becomes a way of carrying that knowledge forward.

The works themselves are made with ochres collected from the Tiwi Islands, painted on both linen and stringybark. Yellow ochre is dug from the earth and can be heated to produce red. White is gathered from coastal cliff faces. The bark is harvested in the wet season, then scraped, heated over fire and flattened before any paint touches it. The color in these paintings is, quite literally, Tiwi Country.

The Jilamara delegation is coming to New York

Here’s what makes opening night genuinely special.

A delegation from Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association is travelling from Milikapiti to New York. They’re coming to represent Timothy and celebrate the exhibition. Members of his community will be there throughout the evening.

That’s a very long way to come. It’s also a rare chance to meet the people behind the art center that sits at the heart of this work. Reflecting on the journey these paintings have made, Cook says: “New York is long way from here.”

A significant month for Tiwi art in America

The timing isn’t a coincidence. Cook’s 2012 award-winning work is currently touring the United States as part of The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art. That exhibition, drawn from the National Gallery of Victoria collection, opens at the Portland Art Museum this September.

Myles Russell-Cook, who curated that exhibition, has contributed an essay to the Kurluwukari catalogue.

So there are two significant presentations of Cook’s work happening in America at the same time, on opposite coasts.

How to visit

The exhibition runs from September 10 to October 9, 2026 at D Lan Galleries, 25 East 73rd Street, Level 4. If you can’t make the opening, the show is up for a month. It’s worth an hour of your time.

For the opening reception on Thursday, September 10, RSVP to [email protected].

Why I’d encourage you to go

Australians in America spend a lot of time explaining where we’re from. This is one of the few chances you’ll get to show it instead.

Aboriginal art rarely gets a solo showing in New York. When it does, it’s usually inside an institution rather than a room you can walk into off the street. Bring an American friend. Bring your kids. Stand in front of a two-and-a-half-meter diptych, painted with ochre dug from an island most New Yorkers have never heard of.

It’s a long way from Milikapiti to East 73rd Street. Worth going to see what made the trip.