Turrangka...in the shadows

29 March – 25 May 2025

A UNSW Galleries Touring exhibition. Curated by Leigh Robb

Turrangka...in the shadows brings together a decade of practice by acclaimed multidisciplinary artist James Tylor. 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 Tylor’s renowned daguerreotypes, expansive digital photographic series, and handmade Kaurna cultural objects. 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. 

Image: James Tylor, (Deleted scenes) From an untouched landscape#14, 2013 (detail). Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper with hole removed to a black velvet void.  Courtesy the artist, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne, GAGPROJECTS | Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide and N.Smith.Gallery, Sydney. Copyright the artist.