Troy-Anthony Baylis: Nomenclatures

Inaugural Guildhouse fellow Troy-Anthony Baylis occupies the Art Gallery Vestibule with new text-based works that challenge and attempt to reconcile the colonial systems of place naming.

Troy-Anthony Baylis explores the legacies of colonialism, migration and historical amnesia by literally weaving together the changing place names of South Australian towns. Baylis has researched the Nomenclature Act of 1917 which anglicised German place names such as Hahndorf, Lobethal and Klemzig, before being restored in 1935. A descendant of the Jawoyn people from the Northern Territory, Baylis has added another layer to the reading of the work through the embroidery of the names of Aboriginal Country over the German and English names. In doing so Baylis reinstates the unceded lands in an act of typographic decolonisation.