Dan Boyd, one of Australia’s leading artists with an indigenous heritage bridging the Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bundjalung, Yuggera and ni-Vanuatu Nations, amplifies the tension between perception and representation in his work. Through the latticework of dots, which Boyd describes as “lenses”, that sprawl across his canvases, he decouples the institutional lockstep of ideology and iconography to reveal the machinery of violence, assimilation and erasure that shores up the cultural production of a colonial state.

Whereas hegemonic narratives resist complexity, interruption and incongruity,  Boyd introduces syncopation to the rhythm of seeing and knowing through marks that “inscribe and erase” subjects never disclosed in their entirety, cohering or dissembling as the viewer moves closer or further away. The uncertainty at the heart of Boyd’s paintings is like an invisible hand that continually adjusts the setting on the colonizer’s telescopic lens, so that its view of history remains just unstable and unfocused enough for the blurred and shifting figures of minor histories to emerge.