James Tylor, Pardu (2025)

Artist Statement

Pardu is a daguerreotype photographic series of Kaurna animals. Most animals documented in the Kaurna language were recorded in the colonial period of the 1830s and 1840s by European colonists. Most names were documented in word lists with simple written descriptions, making identifying the exact species difficult for the contemporary Kaurna language community. In only one instance, bird specimens were collected along with their Kaurna names, but unfortunately, the list of names and the bird specimens were separated, and the bird’s current location are unknown. Technologies such as drawing, painting, and daguerreotype photography were available to European colonists in Adelaide on the Kaurna nation; however, these technologies were not used to document Kaurna animal names. This series explores the hypothetical idea of what if the European colonists used the new Daguerreotype technology to catalogue Kaurna animals. If the colonists had used this technology and recorded the names, we would better understand Kaurna animal naming today.

Ambient Work

Waterbirds 

Birds of Prey

Night Birds

Seabirds 

Parrots

Small Birds

Shallow Birds

Cockatoos

Ground Birds

Educational Information

A special selection of only Kaurna birds from the Pardu daguerreotypes series was made for The Neighbour at the Gate exhibition at the National Art School. Here is some interesting educational information about Kaurna bird naming. There are over 330 endemic species of birds in the Kaurna region on the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. Around 80 Kaurna names for bird species were recorded in the 19th century by German and British colonists in Adelaide. 76 of Kaurna names for birds are onomatopoeic and are based on the sound of bird calls. There are only 6 historical descriptive bird names: Warltu-arri Australian Ringneck, Mingkipina Kookaburra & Tutha-ipiti robin, Murta-ana-itya Chicken, Manimaninya Welcome Swallow & Warrukiti Barking owl. Below is a translation of historical descriptive.

Warrukiti (Barking owl): The Kaurna name refers to the barking sound of the owl’s call, which is similar to the “Warru” dog bark.

Warltu-arri (Australian ringneck parrot): The name translates “Warltu” line on the nape of the neck combined with the onomatopoeic name “(Ng)arri” of the purple crowned lorikeet.

Manimaninya (Welcome Swallow): The name translates roughly to “small brown goshawk”

Mingkipina (Kookaburra): The name means “happy person who laughs a lot”.

Tutha-ipiti (Red robin): The name means “grass orphan” and refers to a Kaurna cultural story about the bird.

Murta-ana-itya (Introduced Chicken): The name translates to “Very large amount of animal faeces”.

In contrast to the Kaurna naming system, which uses a majority of onomatopoeic naming for birds with a few descriptive names. The English common naming system of Australian bird species is largely made up of descriptive names with only a limited amount of onomatopoeic names of bird calls. It is important to note that onomatopoeic names of bird calls in English were generally adopted from Indigenous names, such as Kookaburra from the Wiradjuri language.