Ceremony

The work starts as an idea. So in this case, it’s the interaction between Kaurna and the colonists who had documented language on the frontier of South Australia. I’m predominantly a landscape photographer, so I use landscape to talk about that interaction, visiting places where that transaction of language happened and areas that were transmission points between the colonists and Kaurna. Twenty objects are selected to sit alongside the daguerreotypes in a salon hang. Those objects are signifiers of each of these stories that talk about the transmission or lack of transmission of language on the frontier. They’re cultural objects, they fill the gaps of what’s in the photographs. It isn’t easy to read, it’s deliberately a little ambiguous.

— James Tylor, 2021