Untitled (TBOMB)

Daniel Boyd has created this work of commanding presence from an unassuming subject, a family picnic. Boyd, a descendant of the Kudjila and Gangalu people of central Queensland and of Pacific Islander people, worked from a photograph taken before his birth to depict the occasion of a birthday party on the beach near his family’s home. To create this scene, filled with children and adults surrounded by balloons in the colours of the Aboriginal flag, he has dotted transparent glue across the canvas and then painted over the dots with synthetic polymer paint. This technique recalls the method used by nineteenth-century pointillist painters to create an image by using dots of colour. While Boyd’s image of celebration is universal, his depiction of his family provokes us to rethink eurocentric norms, as his family is Aboriginal rather than European. By positioning his family on equal footing with an ‘average’ European family, the familiarity of this scene encourages us to visualise our shared human experiences and histories.

Daniel Boyd’s diptych Untitled (TBOMB) is the first work by an Aboriginal artist to be acquired through the James and Diana Ramsay Fund, which is also the supporter of the Ramsay Art Prize.

An Australian artist of international repute, Daniel Boyd works across mediums, including painting, moving image and architecture. Utilising European traditions of portraiture, he investigates the myths surrounding the colonisation of Australia.  In his series of paintings titled Sandpiper dance he has turned the gaze inward, making use of deeply personal archival material to position his own family at the centre of the conversation.

Untitled (TBOMB) is a monumental diptych painting from a series created by Boyd while spending a year in his mother’s family’s Country overlooking Trinity Bay, south of Cairns. He worked from a family photograph, taken before he was born, of a family picnic on the beach. A birthday celebration filled with joy and hope, the painting shows balloons in the colours of the Aboriginal flag being hung from the trees, family members mingling and chatting, and many young children gathering expectantly. The image includes his mother, father and aunties, his siblings and cousins, and evocatively captures the atmosphere of the occasion – the trees, the light, the interaction and the emotion.

This is a universal image, one seen time and again in European art, yet it is a provocation because Boyd’s family are not European: they are brown-skinned. By placing them in a painting reminiscent of a European masterwork, he positions them on an equal footing, opening up important conversations about shared human experience.