Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island

Daniel Boyd (b. 1982) is one of Australia’s most acclaimed artists. His practice is internationally recognized for its engagement with the colonial history of the Australia–Great Ocean (Pacific) region. Drawing upon intermingled discourses of science, religion, and aesthetics, Boyd’s work reveals the complexities through which political, cultural, and personal memory is composed. Boyd’s work traces his cultural and visual heritage―both Aboriginal and ni-Vanuatu―in relation to broader histories of colonial settlement and the Western art canon.
Working with an idiosyncratic painting technique that partially obscures the composition, Boyd refigures archival imagery, art historical references, and his family photographs, forcing us to contend with histories that have been overlooked and hidden from view.
Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island unpacks the ways in which Boyd holds a lens to colonial history, explores multiplicity within narratives, and interrogates blackness as a form of First Nations resistance. It provides a thoughtful and thought-provoking response to the current moment, when critical dialogues on ideas of community, connectivity, and cultural repatriation carry special urgency.
With new writing by the exhibition curators and commissioned First Nations authors, the book offers critical insight into Boyd’s practice as well as creative and experimental responses to his work by poets Jazz Money and Ellen van Neerven.