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(Deleted scenes) from an untouched landscape #4, by James Tylor.
This American Ghost by Michael Wasson. Cover Design by Alban Fischer.

James Tylor

James Tylor Portrait, Photograph by Tony

Photograph by Tony Kearney.

Artist Statement for (Deleted Scenes) From an Untouched Landscape

(Featured in Gallery below.)

​This series highlights the contemporary absence of Aboriginal culture within the Australian landscape and how this phenomenon is a direct result of the impact of European colonisation.
 
The first European colonists forced the local Aboriginal people off their traditional lands and into small Christian missions and government reserves. This allowed the new European arrivals free access to clear the land for settlements, forestry and agriculture. This clearing of Aboriginal people from the landscape resulted in the removal of Indigenous cultural artifacts and identity from the Australian landscape.
 
Today the absence of Aboriginal culture within the Australian landscape is censored by this process of colonisation and has left much of the Australian landscape with the appearance that it was ‘Untouched’ before European arrival.

Artist Bio

James Tylor is an Australian multi-disciplinary contemporary visual artist. He was born in Mildura, Victoria. He spent his childhood in Menindee in far west New South Wales, and then moved to Kununurra and Derby in the Kimberley region of Western Australia in his adolescent years. From 2003 to 2008, James trained and worked as a carpenter in Australia and Denmark. In 2011 he completed a bachelor of Visual Arts (Photography) at the South Australian School of Art in Adelaide and in 2012 he completed Honours in Fine Arts (Photography) at the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart. He returned to Adelaide in 2013 and completed a Masters in Visual Arts and Design (Photography) at the South Australian School of Art. Since completing his tertiary education he has researched Indigenous and European colonial history with a focus on South Australia. He is an experienced writer, designer, curator, historian, researcher, art gallery installation and museum collection conservator. James currently works as a professional visual artist in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. 

Tylor is a multi-disciplinary visual artist whose practice explores Australian environment, culture and social history. These mediums include photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound, scents and food. He explores Australian cultural representations through the perspectives of his multicultural heritage that comprises Nunga (Kaurna), Māori (Te Arawa) and European (English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch and Norwegian) ancestry. Tylor’s work focuses largely on the history of 19th century Australia and its continual effect on present day issues surrounding cultural identity and the environment. His research, writing and artistic practice has focused most specifically on Kaurna indigenous culture from the Adelaide Plains region of South Australia and more broadly European colonial history in Southern Australia. His practice also explores Australian indigenous plants and the environmental landscape of Southern Australia.
 
James’ artistic practice specialises in experimental and historical photographic processes. He uses a hybrid of analogue and digital photographic techniques to create contemporary artworks that reference Australian society and history. The processes he employs are the physical manipulation of digital photographic printing, such as the manual hand-colouring of digital prints or the application of physical interventions to the surfaces of digital prints. James also uses the historical 19th century photographic process of the Becquerel Daguerreotype with the aid of modern technology to create new and contemporary Daguerreotypes. Photography was historically used to document Aboriginal culture and the European colonisation of Australia. James is interested in these unique photographic processes to re-contextualise the representation of Australian society and history.

Artist Website and find James on Instagram

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