Daniel Boyd - The Law of Closure

The majority of discussions surrounding young Sydney-based artist Daniel Boyd’s particular iteration of postcolonialist history painting, video and installation work have centred on the idea of the deletion of information and history, especially in relation Boyd’s Aboriginal and Vanuatuan heritage. But there is far more to his distinctive pointillist technique, in which he blackens much of painted surface to leave only a sea of “lenses” that reveal the information beneath, than a simple rumination on erasure. It is no sleight of hand that The Law of Closure, the first book tracing Boyd’s oeuvre, is titled after a Gestalt law. Boyd’s devices are not just about absence, but a kind of psychohistorical ellipsis. The dark matter that enshrouds the flashes of perceptual detail in his works is as much an element of the image as are the landscapes, portraits, reflections and refractions of light that lie amidst and beneath it.

Daniel Boyd has shown in major institutions and exhibitions throughout Australia, the UK and Europe, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Natural History Museum London, Moscow International Biennale for Young Art and the Museu Picasso (Barcelona).

218 pages, 21 x 27 cm, softcover with screenprinted clear vinyl jacket, Perimeter Editions (Melbourne).