Exhibition Opening | Daniel Boyd: Rainbow Serpent (Version)

Celebrate the opening of our new exhibition, Daniel Boyd: Rainbow Serpent (Version).

Join us for a floor talk with artist Daniel Boyd and exhibition curator Liz Nowell, performances by Nunukul Yuggera Jarjum Dancers, poetry by Yugambeh artist and poet Lionel Fogarty, and more.

Rainbow Serpent (Version) is Boyd’s first major exhibition in Meanjin/Brisbane, a place of cultural and ancestral significance for the artist. Encompassing fifteen new paintings rendered with his signature dots, a sculpture, a mirrored-stage floor, and live activations, it continues his interrogation of Western scientific, artistic, and philosophical thought and its role in establishing the colonial Australian state.

Inspired by the dot patterns in his paintings, Boyd’s mirrored-stage floor illuminates these narratives and engages audiences in their reconstruction. As audiences move through the exhibition, its network of mirrored lenses provide infinite ways of viewing and understanding the histories and stories represented on the walls. Throughout the exhibition's duration, Indigenous scholars, artists, activists, and community groups will share the gallery space—through a program of performances, discussions, and yarning—in a poetic act of civic and cultural reclamation.

Times

2.00pm — Welcome to Country

3.00pm — Nunukul Yuggera Jarjum Dancers

3.30pm — Daniel Boyd + Liz Nowell

4.30pm — Lionel Fogarty

COVID-19 Advice 

The IMA strongly encourages mask-wearing onsite in the galleries and for events to keep our community safe. If you are displaying symptoms of COVID-19 or are feeling unwell, please stay home. ⁠

Accessibility 

We are committed to making the IMA accessible to people of all abilities, their families, and carers, as well as visitors of different ages and different backgrounds.

The gallery entrance is on the ground floor of the Judith Wright Arts Centre, on Berwick Street. There is wheelchair access and an accessible toilet with baby changing facilities also located on the ground floor, and we welcome guide and support dogs.

If you plan to attend this event and have specific support needs we can accommodate, please contact engagement@ima.org.au, call (07) 3252 5750, or ask our friendly staff on-site. Read our access information for visitors here.⁠

Artist Biography

Daniel Boyd draws on his heritage—as a Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bundjalung and Yuggera man from North Queensland and North Pentecost Island in Vanuatu—to interrogate legacies of colonisation. He has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 2005. In 2014, he was the first Indigenous Australian to win the prestigious Bulgari Art Award. He has participated in major biennales and exhibitions, including the 2015 Venice Biennale, the 2016 Biennale of Sydney, the 2017 National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the 2017 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. In 2017, his work featured in Mondialité, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Asad Raza at the Boghossian Foundation, Brussels. In 2022, his survey exhibition Treasure Island was presented by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.