Daniel Boyd: Rainbow Serpent (Version), intsallation view, Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2023. Photo: Luca Girardini. Courtesy: the artist and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Rainbow Serpent (Version) is Daniel Boyd’s first major presentation in Meanjin/Brisbane, a place of cultural and ancestral significance for the artist. Through fifteen new paintings, a major site-specific floor installation, and series of live activations, this new commission continues Boyd’s interrogation of Western scientific, artistic, and philosophical thought, and their role in the colonisation of Australia.

Arranged in spatial and conceptual groupings that transcend time and place, Rainbow Serpent (Version) contends with the multitude of ways that colonisation has disrupted cultural tradition and infiltrated civic imagination. Spanning classical antiquity, archival images, Roman mythology, and the artist’s own family history, these paintings articulate the visual language of imperial placemaking, particularly as it has materialised in the state of Queensland.

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