Sydney-based artist Daniel Boyd interrogates Eurocentric historical narratives from an Indigenous point of view (he has a mixed heritage that includes the Kudjlat, Gangalu and Vanuatuan peoples). He's best known for pointillist arrangements of transparent dots (which he describes as lenses) that he overlays on painted scenes or landscapes (often taken from colonial era photographs). The space between the dots is then blacked out. ‘What Remains’, which he created for the Biennale of Sydney, seems a little different: the dots are reflective, like tiny mirrors against a black wall. In fact, it’s a new iteration of a work Boyd did for the MCA Foyer Wall Commission in 2014.
At the Biennale media call, Boyd said he chose Redfern because of the history of the area. “I wanted to touch on that and help people try to understand and speak about their relationship with this area, this landscape.”