James Tylor
APT9
Born 1986 Mildura, Victoria, Australia
Lives and works in Canberra, Australia
Through his photographic practice, James Tylor examines the loss of Indigenous cultural identity in contemporary Australia. Combining drawing with analogue and digital photographic techniques, he uses historical photographic processes such as the daguerreotype and ambrotype that were often used to document Indigenous peoples and the European colonisation of the continent. He also experiments with contemporary techniques of colouring, tearing and scratching the prints, incorporating elements from oral histories and archival research. In recent works, he has created and photographed culturally hybrid versions of tools, shelters, and other significant objects that reflect his own diverse heritage, which comprises Nunga (Kaurna), Māori (Te Arawa), European (English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, Iberian and Norwegian) and Australian ancestry. The histories of colonisation and migration — and their profound impact on Indigenous cultures and relationship to place and spirituality — are central to his practice.
James Tylor / Kaurna, Māori, Australia b. 1986 / Installation view of Te Moana Nui (Navigating time and space) 2017 / Daguerrotypes: 9 parts / Dimensions variable / © James Tylor / Courtesy: The artist, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne and GAG PROJECTS, Adelaide | Berlin
Through his photographic practice, James Tylor engages with his South Australian Nunga (Kaurna) heritage, and reflects on the histories of colonisation and migration, inspired by his own diverse background – also comprising Māori (Te Arawa), European (English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, Iberian and Norwegian) and Australian ancestry. Drawing on archival research, Tylor often uses historical photographic processes, such as the daguerreotype – somewhat ghostly images on polished silver plates – that was used to document Indigenous peoples in colonial times.
Te Moana Nui, the Polynesian term for the Pacific Ocean, evokes the historical journeys of people, together with their ancestors, cultural beliefs and values, across the water. Tylor’s images show a culture sustained by the land and a range of traditional technologies: carved fishhooks, Pacific navigation charts, the Māori weapon Koatiate (club) and customary tattooing tools, as well as a taonga (treasure) in the form of a hei tiki. Other images refer to the coming of Europeans and Christianity, and visualise the intersections between the human, natural and spiritual worlds. Turning ethnographic photography to new ends,
Tylor’s works evoke a narrative of movement, contact and cultural change that emerges from his desire to foreground the past so that we might better understand the present.
