DeCookolisation by James Tylor

James Tylor uses daguerreotype and wet plate photographic processes to explore complex issues of identity and cultural representation, including his own Aboriginal, European and Maori descent, and Australia’s colonial past. In Tyloer's latest series, DeCookolisation, he uses the Becquerel Daguerreotype to depict places in the South Pacific that were named, by the British, in honour of Capitan James Cook. These include the highest mountain in New Zealand, a town in Northern Australia, and an island nation in the South Pacific — Mount Cook, Cooktown and the Cook Islands.

Mirroring Cook’s unauthorized ‘appropriation’ in the making of DeCookolisation, Tylor sourced images from the Internet without seeking the permission of their original owners. Yet, there is a transformation at play that makes these images conceptually and creatively ‘new’, not least due to the daguerreotype’s mirrored finish.

With the continuing political struggle to ensure just acknowledgement of traditional landowners’ rights, and with issues of artistic copyright and notions of creative ‘originality’ lagging behind a common culture of remix and appropriation, Tylor’s work asks a question that is deeply pertinent to our present-day — when and how is it morally okay to claim other people’s property, and call it your own?

• Organised by: Stills Gallery