Sydney-based artist Daniel Boyd has often worked with archives and museum collections as source material to create his vision of decolonisation. In a career just short of two decades, many of his projects have used the idea of darkness as a form of Indigenous resistance to counter the power of Enlightenment ideas and western civilisation.

Over a period of months, Boyd researched the museum’s various collections, eventually selecting a group of 19th century plaster casts and a model of the Athenian Acropolis from the Nicholson Collection of antiquities.

For this new commission entitled Pediment/Impediment, the artist has veiled the entire Penelope Gallery in pinpoints of light. In the mottled half-light, a number of classical plaster casts can be made out amid mirrored pools of light, forming a disturbing and eerie space. In this installation, the transplanted second-hand versions of western civilisations are recast, inviting other ways of seeing our past and future.

Daniel Boyd was born in Cairns, Queensland, in 1982, he is of the Kudjila/Gangalu peoples, from Clermont South to the Dawson River region of mid Queensland.

Exhibition closed 27 June 2021

Location

Chau Chak Wing Museum

Cost

Free