"Un-resettling (Hauntings)" (series) 2019
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James Tylor
Born 1986, Latji Latji and Barkindji Country/Mildura, Victoria. Lives and works in Kamberri/Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Nunga (Kaurna Miyurna), Māori (Te Arawa), and European (English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch and Norwegian). Pronouns: he/him.
Top row, left to right:
"Un-resettling (Cairn Landmarker)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
"Un-resettling (Totem Poles - Landmarkers)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
"Un-resettling (Sand Paintings)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
"Un-resettling (Bird Hide)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
Bottom row, left to right:
"Un-resettling (Bird Snare)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
"Un-resettling (Native Rat Trap)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
"Un-resettling (Scar Tree)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
"Un-resettling (Stone Tidal Fish Trap)" 2016
from the series ‘Un-resettling (Hauntings)’
hand-coloured digital print on paper, edition 2/5
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
This photographic series by James Tylor troubles and unsettles the ongoing colonial project. Upending the traditions of landscape photography and its colonial implications of capture, conquest, and control, Un-resettling (Hauntings) has been staged across present-day Australia in national parks and conservation estates—areas legally designated for recreational land use on occupied custodial Country.
Tylor’s practice centres around the revival or reparation of culture that has waned or disappeared since colonisation. In Un-resettling, he researches, constructs, and inserts traditional Aboriginal architectures, ceremonial objects, and hunting structures onto Country, and into the photographic documentary frame they have been absent from. In evidencing stone tidal fishing traps, bird snares, and scar trees, Tylor’s works are a poignant reminder of how Country was used and how it appeared prior to settler colonialism.
This gesture of revival functions as a reparative act of care for the continuity of Indigenous knowledges and kinship with Country. Tylor’s practice inverts the policies of assimilation and the systematic theft of land, language, and culture. By inserting living cultural material into the photographic frame, Tylor reasserts sovereignty, refuting the legal fiction of terra nullius, which was claimed for the British Crown despite the land being home to hundreds of self-identifying nations.