This is James Tylor’s UNCRATED – the best provenanced works and objects returned from two acclaimed international touring exhibitions.  Freed from their crates in a typically impressive installation, they are now ready to be re-homed.

The exhibition showcases two momentous collections – Scenes from an Untouched Landscape and Economics of Water.  

Importantly we wish to advise that the featured series – Scenes from an Untouched Landscape, and Economics of Water – will be discontinued as singular artworks at the close of this exhibition.  The series will only be available to acquire as large-scale installations at the artist’s discretion.  This is the perfect opportunity to view and select from this iconic series of framed prints and objects.  If you have been drawn to this body of work over the years, we highly recommend that you view the pictorial pricelist or visit the gallery during the exhibition.

James Tylor is an Australian multidisciplinary contemporary visual artist, whose practice explores Australian environment, culture and social history through the mediums of 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 Miyurna), 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 and the environmental landscape of the Adelaide Plains region of South Australia and more broadly European colonial history in Southern Australia.

Photography was historically used to document Aboriginal culture and the European colonisation of Australia. James is interested in unique photographic processes to re-contextualise the representation of Australian society and history.

Scenes from an Untouched Landscape

This multi-iteration series highlights the contemporary absence of Australian 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 Indigenous people off their traditional lands and into small Christian missions and government reserves. This allowed the new arrivals free access to clear the land for settlements, forestry and agriculture etc. This clearing of the landscape resulted in the removal of Indigenous cultural artifacts and our identity from the Australian landscape.

Today the absence of Indigenous 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.

(Removed Scenes)

(Vanished Scenes)

From an Untouched Landscape Objects

Economics of Water

Economics of Water highlights the environmental damage to the Murray Darling River system from poor water management by the State and Federal governments of Australia. This series of photographs of the drought effected Menindee Lakes have been overlaid with gold geometric shapes that symbolise the human infrastructure of water diversion for commercial agriculture and settlements.

The Murray Darling Basin is Australia’s largest river system, stretching across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. The rivers, lakes and floodplains have been a sustainable cultural river system for Indigenous people living along the waterways for 65,000+ years, providing water, food, resources and trade routes.

Following European colonisation, control of the River’s natural resources have been redirected to non-Indigenous agriculture, fisheries, transport and settlements. Industrialisation of agriculture through large commercial-scale farming and multi-national owned companies has led to unsustainable water consumption from the Murray Darling River system. The State and Federal Governments have and continue to use the River’s natural resources as a commodity for financial profit with little regard for environmental and cultural consequences.

Karta Pintingga (The Island of the Dead)

Karta Pintingga (The Island of the Dead) is a silent mono-chromatic film about Karta Pintingga Kangaroo Island in South Australia. This visually poetic silent film references the Island’s dark human history. The Island has a long Indigenous history dating back over 45,000 years. Since its isolation from the Australian landmass 10,000 years ago, it was uninhabited by people until the arrival of Matthew Flinders in 1802 and European whalers who colonised it between 1803-1836. Karta Pintingga has cultural importance for Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri people. They have dark stories about the Island’s creation and of its colonial history with European whalers kidnapping Indigenous women and holding them captive there. Karta Pintingga is the Kaurna name for Kangaroo Island and it translates to “the Island of the Dead.”