Enlightenment and Darkness: James Tylor in Conversation with Dominic Guerrera

In the lead up to his first survey exhibition on his home Country, artist James Tylor (Kaurna) sits down with poet and curator Dominic Guerrera (Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri) for a conversation about the relationship between local colonial cultural institutions and their ongoing relationships to Aboriginal communities.

Dominic Guerrera (DG): Can you tell us about how this exhibition came to life?

James Tylor (JT): The exhibition was first created by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) at UNSW Gallery, curated by Leigh Robb. They wanted to do a full survey of my art practice, where they pulled together photography, furniture and some other cultural objects that I made during my career as an artist.

DG: ‘Turrangka…in the shadows’ is an exhibition that marks your first major exhibition on Kaurna Yarta. What does it mean to exhibit work of this scale on your own Country?

JT: I’ve exhibited lots of times in the past on Kaurna Yarta, just single bodies of work at different institutions. But this will be the first time that a large collection of my works are being brought together for a survey exhibition at the South Australia Art Gallery. So, it is important because almost all my artwork that I’ve made over the last 15 years has been about the history of South Australia and Kaurna culture.

DG: How does exhibiting on Kaurna Yarta shift the emotional or cultural weight of the work compared to showing interstate or internationally?

JT: It is different showing my Kaurna related artworks on Kaurna Yarta opposed to interstate or internationally. I’ve always found exhibiting interstate a bit odd for a couple of reasons. My art practice has generally done better outside of South Australia.

I’ve had lots of local support in the early parts of my career both from Adelaide art scene and the Kaurna community, but then my practice started expanding to the other states and was getting exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne. There seemed to be more of an audience for my practice over in the east and then I started to get less opportunities back home in South Australia. For the exhibition to come home has been pretty important because the majority of the work is related to Kaurna Country and culture. To have it back home and exhibited at Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) is really important because the context is that the work’s about this place and it’s actually always has been made for a South Australian audience, specifically Adelaide.

I think it’s kind of interesting how Adelaidians haven’t really been seeking out my Kaurna related artworks in the same way as people of the east coast. To be honest I think it is emblematic about the ways that non-Indigenous people in Adelaide engage with our community in different ways, like Welcomes and Acknowledgements of Country. They are only really engaging superficially and with the surface level of Kaurna culture. They are less so seeking our art and cultural perspective unless ticking boxes which is tokenistic. Ultimately, I would like non-Indigenous people in Adelaide to engage more deeply with Kaurna culture and our community given that they live on our country.

DG: Yeah, this is arguably the first exhibition of this scale by a Kaurna artist at AGSA despite the gallery situated on Kaurna Yarta. What thoughts or feelings come to you with this type of milestone?

JT: I would have hoped that AGSA would have historically had more of a connection with the Kaurna community, particularly in the last 30 years, since our community has been more active in Adelaide. I would have hoped that they had more Kaurna and Nunga artists well before me. To my knowledge the only local Nunga artist to have a survey was Ngarrindjeri artist Yvonne Koolamatrie who had a large survey show and she is (one of) the most collected Nunga artists too. Apart from Yvonne Koolamatrie there hasn’t actually been that much representation of Nungas, let alone Kaurna artists. It’s a huge privilege, but I feel like there should be other Nunga artists such as Yhonnie Scarce, Raymond Zada and Ali Baker—who are significant and incredible artists—with more established careers than myself.

They also haven’t collected large amounts of contemporary Kaurna artists’ work, like Carly Dodd or Damien Shen. I don’t believe either of them have work in AGSA’s collection. For myself, I have 2 works in the AGSA collection but for comparison I have more works in the National Gallery of Victoria (NGA), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)and New South Wales Art Gallery.

DG: This is a weird positioning for AGSA because so much of their collection is prioritising works that tell the origins of the colonial story of South Australia, yet when it comes to local Aboriginal stories, there seems to be a reluctance to engage with that.

JT: For me it’s a very colonial system that works in a very colonial network and Nunga people have always been on the periphery of that. We’re only now being brought into these spaces. I actually wrote an article about how poorly they were performing in their Australian and Aboriginal art displays about 10 years ago. It was published in 2016 for Fine Print and called When Parallel Worlds (Don’t) Collide: Decolonising and Indigenising Australian Art, on how AGSA could improve their displays.

That essay came about after having private discussions with several curators who worked there and then having my concerns and suggestions to improve it thrown back in my face. So, I was like, “Oh well, I’m going to write about this publicly because you’re not taking what I’m saying as a Kaurna person seriously, and also you’re not changing”. In the wake of the Tarnanthi Festival, to AGSA’s credit, they did change and improve their displays. They maybe didn’t change as well as I would have hoped and they still have a long way to ago. But I do think that those changes that made them leaders over other institutes in Australia, but still like they could do a hell of a lot better. They need to listen and take on all the feedback from their Indigenous advisory, plus employ more Indigenous Curators in the institute to improve their Aboriginal and Australian Art display.

DG: Is that because the bar is so low for Australian institutes?

JT: Yeah, exactly. Some institutes have had better Aboriginal engagement and employment—like New South Wales Art Gallery—for years, but then they still have problematic colonial practices around the wider New South Wales colonial narrative. So, none of these colonial western institutes in Australia are performing best practice.

DG: AGSA’s acquisition and display of the Kaurna shield for some was seen as a significant cultural moment and for others it came across as paying lip service. What did that moment mean to you personally as a Kaurna artist?

JT: I’ve read the report about the Murlapaka shield and I think they were buying it because they didn’t have a significant historical Kaurna cultural object in their institute and they felt like they needed something Kaurna.

They acquired it for a significant sum of money and in my opinion that money would have been better spent acquiring multiple Kaurna Murlapaka shields directly from contemporary Kaurna community members rather than to buy a historical shield.

Because our community is still making shields today.

What is problematic about this shield is the provenance of the shield and where it was collected. The origin of the shield is quite dubious and the report never got to the conclusion, is it specifically Kaurna?

I am a Kaurna shield maker. I’ve researched shields from our region of South Australia. The shield acquired by AGSA is a very unorthodox design for a Kaurna shield. It’s quite difficult to locate what community the shield original came from. While it’s got the size proportions of a typical Kaurna shield, it doesn’t have the design pattern. Yes, it has the bands like our shields do, but they’re carved etching, which is a practice that I don’t think Kaurna did traditionally and the communities that did do carved etching were from the Murray River. Because it has the same proportions as a Kaurna shield plus it has the Murray River design, I believe that it’s come from community in between Adelaide and the Murray. It therefore most likely originated from one of the Peramangk clans on the eastern side of the Adelaide Hills and not Kaurna at all.

I think it’s problematic because it’s given the label Kaurna when it most likely belongs to another Aboriginal community. For Aboriginal people this is not the proper way. We don’t claim other communities cultural material, as a sign of respect. The only reason that it was attributed to coming from Kaurna community because it would fetch more money at auction because the art gallery wanted a Kaurna cultural object. If they had commissioned Kaurna people to make the shield, they would know the provenance of where they were buying it and the money would go back to our community, not a non-Indigenous collector.

DG: What you’re saying is very emblematic of our discussion earlier, about the lack of engagement with living culture. For us as Kaurna people, this is our preference.

JT: It’s just the way that the Western system navigates. So, we can either put it down that the gallery is racist, or that the system is racist, but it’s also just not a system for us either.

It comes from a completely different cultural background, it’s European, it’s not an Aboriginal-designed institute. The non-Indigenous curators, artists and arts workers are western educated in university, predominantly learning western art, Aboriginal Art and culture. It’s this highly problematic system and we’re kind of always going to be considered inauthentic within it. The reality is Aboriginal people are doubly qualified [in art history] because we learn both Aboriginal culture from our communities as well as learn the Western system in school and university. It’s only now that we are starting to see the end of cultural apartheid and we’re starting to be socially valued and presented in these institutes.

DG: My last question is probably one of hope and thinking about an ideal future. What do you hope the relationship between Kaurna and Nungar artists and AGSA look like?

JT: I think AGSA would need structural change to perform best practice. Things that would help would be co-directors that are Aboriginal and non-Indigenous. Preferably the Aboriginal co-director is Kaurna or Nunga from South Australia. They would need to have a Kaurna Elders’ council and Aboriginal arts advisory group. They need to have Aboriginal employees in the institute to have the best engagement between the Aboriginal artists. The First Nations curatorial team needs to always be Indigenous.

Aboriginal people need to be valued to make structural change and reform to Western system in the institution in Australia. The ideological problem is Western system is considered the pinnacle that needs to be brought down. I think Aboriginal culture needs to be the primary focus of an Australian cultural institute. Not a foreign cultural system that centres Europe that comes from Italy, Germany or England.

Unfortunately, that ends up being the one that is put up on the pedestal.

There needs to be complete structural reform before we see quality change, this needs to be targeted at the ideology of the institute. To be honest, it’s not happening at the pace it needs to happen, its not radical or fast enough. It’s a very slow and gradual change that’s happening from the Institute, and it’s definitely not happening in a systematic way, rather in a more haphazard way.

I will say there’s been reforms here and there, but you can tell from the way our community is having issues with these institutes that it’s really underperforming, and it’s like they’re not engaging with us in the healthiest ways.

I do appreciate the fact that I’m showing in Art Gallery of South Australia this year, but it does come with critique of the institute because of State Art Gallery’s poor engagement with our Kaurna community and our wider Nunga community in the past.