The removal of Aboriginal cultures due to colonisation has left the appearance that Australia was ‘Untouched’ before European arrival.
—JAMES TYLOR

Artist James Tylor highlights under-told and unseen histories of Aboriginal peoples. Knowing Australia has been known by many names to many peoples, Tylor takes an expansive approach to photographing the landscape by incorporating his Kaurna Miyurna knowledge into his practice using both old and new technologies. In Tylor’s hands, photography, once used to survey Aboriginal lands and peoples, becomes a way to indigenize landscapes.

From an Untouched Landscape is Tylor’s first solo exhibition in the United States and was curated by Marina Tyquiengco (Col ’81), the inaugural Ellyn McColgan Assistant Curator of Native American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Residency
James Tylor will visit Kluge-Ruhe in March 2023 as a resident artist! It will be our first in-person artist residency since the pandemic. While here, Tylor will speak to UVA classes, hold a photography workshop and much more. Check our calendar in the months leading up to the residency to see when you can connect with him.

Sponsors
This exhibition has been sponsored by Australia Council for the Arts, the Embassy of Australia, Washington, DC, and the Honorable Nick Greiner, Australian Consul-General, New York.

About James Tylor
James Tylor is an Australian multi-disciplinary
contemporary visual artist, whose practice
explores Australian environment, culture and
social history. He works in mixed media, including
photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture,
installation, sound, scents and food. He was
born in Victoria, spent his childhood in New
South Wales, and then moved to the Kimberley
region in his adolescent years. After training
and working as a carpenter in Australia and
Denmark, he completed a Bachelors of Visual
Arts and a Masters in Visual Arts and Design,
both in Photography, at the South Australian
School of Art, as well as an Honors in Fine Arts in
Photography at the Tasmanian School of Art. 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.

Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past & Present Together) celebrates the 50th anniversary of Papunya Tula Artists, from the very first experiments of painting on scraps of board through to the epic, abstract paintings that travel the world today. It tells a story of constant artistic rejuvenation. Inspired by the sweeping ancestral landscape of the Australian desert, it is one of the world’s greatest stories of resilience, self-determination and the power of art. The current exhibition is the second part of this exhibition. In 2021-22 our exhibition focused on the first twenty-five years of this movement, from 1971-1995. The current exhibition focuses on the most recent twenty-five years, from 1996 to today.

Exhibition Catalog
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog edited by Fred Myers & Henry Skerritt. It includes essays by numerous Indigenous artists and curators, as well as actor/comedian Steve Martin. Click here to purchase.

Partners & Sponsors
Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past & Present Together) is presented in partnership with Papunya Tula Artists. It is sponsored by the Robert and Molly Hardie and the H7 Foundation, The Gordon Darling Foundation, Australian Cultural Fund, Stephen and Agatha Luczo, the Embassy of Australia, the UVA Parents Fund, the UVA Institute of Humanities and Global Cultures, the UVA Mapping Indigenous Worlds Lab, and the UVA Department of Art.

More Background
The township of Papunya was founded in 1959 as a settlement for Aboriginal people who were relocated from their homelands. Papunya drew together Aboriginal people from a disparate range of language groups: Luritja, Pintupi, Anmatyerr, Warlpiri, and Kukatja. Some had considerable experience with white Australians. For others, life in Papunya represented their first encounter with colonizers. Inside this bubbling, cross-cultural cauldron, a small group of men began to paint their ancestral designs onto scraps of cardboard, linoleum and masonite.

Painting offered a way of claiming authority: of explaining who you were and where you came from in this chaotic mélange of strangers. Using ancient iconographies rarely seen by outsiders, an artistic renaissance sprung forth as artists defiantly asserted themselves against the uncertainty of colonial displacement.

Artists at Papunya expressed the conditions of their cultural and geographic displacement that have come to define the contemporary experience of Indigenous people and refugees worldwide. Painting began as a vehicle for the survival and transmission of cultural knowledge, but quickly grew into a powerful medium for economic and social justice. In 1972 the artists banded together to form the Papunya Tula Artists company, which still operates today under the guidance of its Aboriginal board of directors. The international success of Papunya Tula Artists inspired the creation of similar cooperatives across Australia, creating a multi-million-dollar industry and helping artists return to their ancestral homelands. Over the last fifty years Papunya Tula has redefined Aboriginal Australian art, sparking one of the most important contemporary art movements of our time.