James Tylor: Turrangka...in the shadows Audio Guide: Self-Guided Audio Tour
Work 1 of 6

Fire Country is a series that I made with Canberra-based artist Rebecca Selleck. The work was in response to the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires. We wanted to document a series of different bushfires that occurred over that summer. We were affected by the Malua Bay bushfires, which we had to evacuate the south coast and go to Canberra.

Another fire that affected us was the Ororral Valley fire. I remember seeing the very first plume rise up in the air after a military helicopter had started a grass fire in the Ororral Valley. The fire spread over days and reached the southern suburbs of Canberra. We could see the bushfire from our house, and we even considered evacuating at different points but fortunately it never reached the suburbs. 

We also wanted to document the Kangaroo Island bushfires as well as the Mount Bold bushfires in South Australia. Rebecca Selleck and I wanted to make a work that addressed fire management in Australia. Bushfires are a normal part of the Australian environment, and there are two different methods that humans have developed to manage bushfires. There is the Indigenous method, which has been developed over thousands of years in relation to the environment. And then there's a non-Indigenous method of fire management, which is leading to these catastrophic bushfires.

Growing up in Western Australia in my teenage years, I got to experience Indigenous fire management around Derby and Kununurra in the Kimberley, and I could see how these cooler burns managed to keep fire under control while eradicating weeds and better improving the environment. Whilst living down south, I saw time and time again, fires that are way too hot that damage the environment. 

We decided to call our series Fire Country after Victor Seffensen's book, which looked at Aboriginal fire management, which, since the publication of that book, Indigenous fire management is being taken seriously and is being adopted in southern Australia. So much so, that we now even have a Kaurna fire management team that looks after certain sections of Kaurna Yarta.