Turrangka...in the shadows

29 March – 25 May 2025

UNSW Galleries presents a ten-year survey exhibition by leading Australian artist James Tylor

Turrangka...in the shadows brings together a decade of practice by acclaimed multidisciplinary artist James Tylor for the first time. Tylor’s practice unpacks the histories of colonisation and its profound impact on Indigenous cultures as informed by his heritage comprising Nunga (Kaurna Miyurna), Māori (Te Arawa) and European (English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch and Norwegian) ancestry. His expansive practice combines historical and contemporary photographic processes, exploring the complexities of cultural identity and relationships to place, in particular to the Kaurna Country of South Australia. 

This extensive survey features over 200 works across fifteen series, establishing a potent interplay between Tylor’s renowned daguerreotypes, expansive digital photographic series, handmade Kaurna cultural objects, and furniture. The exhibition calls attention to Tylor’s enduring interest in the Becquerel Daguerreotype, a 19th-century photographic process to which he has returned throughout his career. These works consider the contested role of the daguerreotype in representations of Indigenous peoples, recontextualising this unique process to interrogate colonial records and generate a new archive of pseudo-historical images.

Tylor approaches his practice as a means of cultural repatriation. His imaging of the Australian landscape features physical interventions to photographic surfaces, including manual hand-colouring and the layering of Kaurna cultural designs using ochres sourced from Country. His ‘deleted’ landscapes experiment with erasure methods through tearing, redacting, and scratching.