About the Book
Daniel Boyd (b 1982) is one of Australia's most acclaimed young artists. His practice is internationally recognised for its manifold 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. With both Aboriginal and ni-Vanuatu heritage, Boyd's work traces this cultural and visual ancestry in relation to the broader history of Western art.
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with an idiosyncratic painting technique that partially obscures the composition, Boyd refigures archival imagery, art historical references and his family photographs, forcing us to contend with histories that have been hidden from view. His recent work draws on Gestalt theory, the allegory of Plato's cave, dark matter and the Necker
cube.
Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island unpacks the ways 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 where critical dialogues on ideas of community, connectivity and cultural repatriation carry particular urgency.
With new writing by the exhibition curators and commissioned First Nations authors, the book offers both critical insight into Daniel Boyd's practice as well as creative and experimental responses to his work.
Boyd has exhibited widely in Australia and recognised internationally with his Up in smoke tour exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London in 2011 (following his artist-in-residence there); inclusion in the 56th Venice
Biennale All The World's Futures exhibition in 2015; and solo exhibition Treasure Island at the Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea in 2021.
Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island is published in conjunction with the artist's first major exhibition to be held in an Australian public institution. The book will feature over 100 works from across his nearly two-decade career and includes new work and commissioned spatial interventions.
About the Author :
Daniel Boyd (b 1982) is one of Australia's most acclaimed young artists. Boyd's practice is
internationally recognised for its manifold engagement with the colonial history of the
Australia-Great Ocean (Pacific) region. Boyd has both Aboriginal and Ni-Vanuatu heritage, and
his work traces this cultural and visual ancestry in relation to the broader history of Western
art. Boyd has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australia and internationally
and his works are held in numerous public collections, including the Natural History Museum,
London, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Tamaki Makaurau (Auckland).
Isobel Parker Philip is the senior curator of contemporary Australian art and previously curator
of photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She has curated or co-curated many
exhibitions including The National: New Australian Art (2019), Imprint: Photography and the
Impressionable Image (2016); New Matter: Recent Forms of Photography (2016-17); Hold still:
The Photographic Performance (2018) and Shadow Catchers (2020-21. She writes and
publishes extensively.
Erin Vink is a Ngiyampaa curator and writer, currently working as curator of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her recent projects include
Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology, |AlIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Sante
Fe (2021), The National: New Australian Art (2021) and Longing for Home (2021), both at
AGNSW. She has written and published extensively on Aboriginal art, with her contributions
including 'First Nations museum memorials: Daniel Boyd and Yhonnie Scarce', Artlink (2021)
and 'Daniel Boyd: Shadowing the Enlightenment', Art Monthly Australasia (2021).
Daniel Browning is an Aboriginal journalist, radio broadcaster, sound artist and writer.
Currently, he produces and presents The Art Show on ABC Radio National. He is editor of
Indigenous Radio at the ABC, managing the flagship programs Awaye! and Speaking Out and is
executive producer of the podcast Thin Black Line. A visual arts graduate, Daniel is also a
widely published freelance writer on the arts and culture. Daniel is a descendant of the
Bundjalung and Kullilli peoples of far northern NSW and south-western Queensland.
Dr Léuli Eshraghi (SAmoan/Persian/Cantonese) intervenes in display territories to centre
global Indigenous and diasporic Asian visuality, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonialpolitical
practices. They curated the 9th TarraWarra Biennial of Australian Art (2023) and is
curatorial researcher-in-residence at the University of Queensland Art Museum (2021-).
Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri poet and artist currently based on Gadigal land. Her practice is
centred around the written word while producing works that encompass installation, digital,
film and print. Jazz's writing has been widely performed and published nationally and
internationally. Their David Unaipon Award-winning debut collection 'how to make a basket'
was released in 2021 with University of Queensland Press.
Dr Michael Mossman is a Kuku Yalanji man, born and raised in Cairns on Yidinji Country. He
now lives and works on Gadigal land and is a lecturer and researcher at the University of
Sydney School of Architecture Design and Planning where he has been awarded his doctor of
philosophy for his thesis: 'Third space, architecture and indigeneity'. He is a registered
architect who champions Country and First Nations cultures as agents for structural change in
the broader architectural profession at educational, practice and policy levels.
Djon Mundine OAM is a proud Bandjalung man from the Northern Rivers of NSW. Mundine is
a curator, writer, cultural mentor, artist and activist and is celebrated as a foundational figure
in the criticism and exhibition of contemporary Aboriginal art. Mundine has held many senior
curatorial positions in both national and international institutions. In 1993 he received the
Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the promotion and development of Aboriginal
arts, crafts and culture and in 2020 was awarded the Australia Council of the Arts Red Ochre
Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Asad Raza is an artist born in Buffalo, USA of Pakistani heritage. He creates dialogues and
rejects disciplinary boundaries in his work, which conceives of art as a metabolic, active
experience. Emplying actions and processes - such as soil-making, tennis, and horticulture -
his projects have been realised by institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York; Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Serpentine Galleries,
London; Metro Pictures, New York; Urbane Kunst Ruhr, Essen; and the Lahore Biennale.
Nathan 'mudyi' Sentance is a Wiradjuri librarian and creative history practitioner who grew up
on Darkinjung Country, and writes about critical librarianship and critical museology. His
writing has been previously published in The Guardian, Cordite Poetry, the Lifted Brown and
Sydney Review of Books, and on his own blog, The Archival Decolonist.
Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali (Yugambeh Nation) and Dutch
heritage. Ellen's first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the
Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. They
have written two poetry collections: Comfort Food (shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary
Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize) and Throat (winner of the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the
Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards).
