Daniel Boyd: Rainbow Serpent (Version) at the Institute of Modern Art
Last year, Daniel Boyd debuted his first major solo exhibition, Treasure Island, at the Art Gallery of NSW, in which he notably reframed colonialists as looting pirates. For his next major exhibition, Rainbow Serpent (Version), Boyd has collaborated with other Indigenous creators to build on these ideas.
For Rainbow Serpent (Version), the multidisciplinary artist has created 15 new paintings with his signature dot work, a sculpture and a mirrored, dotted-stage floor. With each of these works, Boyd explores themes of identity, memory, perception, and history.
Throughout the exhibition the gallery will also be hosting performances, discussions, and yarns by Indigenous scholars, artists, activists, and community groups. In occupying colonised environments (like an art gallery), Boyd and his collaborators make direct reference to the resilience of First Nations people and their 60,000-year-old cultural traditions which remain steadfastly unbroken.
With these artworks, Boyd interrogates the role of Western thought in the establishment of colonial Australia and invites us to reconsider the lenses through which we view the past, present, and future.
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