Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island at the Art Gallery of NSW

Over the last 20 years, Daniel Boyd has grown to become one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists. A Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Yuggera and Bundjalung man with ni-Vanuatu heritage, Boyd first came to prominence in 2005 with his No Beard series of appropriated historical portraits. Since then, he has continued to reinterpret and interrogate the Eurocentric perspectives of so-called ‘Australia’s’ history in the form of paintings, sculptures, installations and more. Having just opened on Saturday June 4 at the Art Gallery of NSW, Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island is the artist’s first major Australian solo exhibition held in a state art museum.

Running until January 29 2023, Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island features 80 works from across the artist’s career. This includes early works from the 2000s through to new paintings, alongside specially commissioned spatial interventions. Underpinning the range of works on display is Boyd’s incisive refiguration of colonial histories, with the exhibition exploring the multiplicities of these narratives.

Curated by Erin Vink, curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, and Isobel Parker Philip, senior curator of contemporary Australian art, Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island is displayed non-chronologically, with each room focusing on an aspect of Boyd’s practice. Examining Boyd’s unique visual language, the exhibition provides a thought-provoking response to the current moment, in which critical dialogues about community, connectivity and cultural repatriation carry particular urgency.

Accompanying the exhibition is a rich publication featuring words from the exhibition’s curators, as well as First Nations authors including Daniel Browning, Dr Léuli Eshrāghi, Jazz Money, Dr Michael Mossman, Ellen van Neerven and Nathan ‘mudyi’ Sentance.

Free to visit, Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island is showing at the Art Gallery of NSW from Saturday June 4 through to Sunday January 29, 2023.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with the Art Gallery of NSW.