2025 Tatiara Art Prize Winner

James TYLOR

(Adelaide, South Australia)

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Tapa-arra Through the Landscape

cut photograph in glass frame
acquired by Tatiara District Council 

 

Artist statement:

Tapa-arra Through the Landscape highlights historical Indigenous roads, songlines and trade routes across Australia. For millennia, Aboriginal people have used roads to link nations for travel, migration, trading, and cultural purposes.  These works specifically examine roads linking the Kaurna people with neighbouring nations in South Australia and across Australia. There are several well recorded Kaurna roads, from Adelaide, South to Rapid Bay, South East to Encounter Bay, West to the River Murray, North East to the Barossa Valley and North to the Northern Adelaide Plains. The British and German colonists used the Kaurna roads during colonisation in the 19th century, which have become main highways today.  Kaurna people and their neighbouring nations created these roads because they were the most accessible and most direct paths through the landscape. The photographs depict the sites of these historical roads, and are cut in half, symbolising the path of least resistance through the land.