Books published by Art Gallery of New South Wales

Daniel Boyd (b 1982) is one of Australia's most acclaimed young artists. His practice is internationally recognised for its manifold engagement with the colonial history of the Australia-Great Ocean (Pacific) region. Drawing upon intermingled discourses of science, religion and aesthetics, Boyd's work reveals the complexities through which political, cultural and personal memory is composed. With both Aboriginal and ni-Vanuatu heritage, Boyd's work traces this cultural and visual ancestry in relation to the broader history of Western art. Working with an idiosyncratic painting technique that partially obscures the composition, Boyd refigures archival imagery, art historical references and his family photographs, forcing us to contend with histories that have been hidden from view. His recent work draws on Gestalt theory, the allegory of Plato's cave, dark matter and the Necker cube. The book includes an insert of Boyd's signature 'lens' device which works as an intervention into the act of seeing both literally and culturally. Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island unpacks the ways Boyd holds a lens to colonial history, explores multiplicity within narratives, and interrogates blackness as a form of First Nations' resistance. It provides a thoughtful and thought-provoking response to the current moment where critical dialogues on ideas of community, connectivity and cultural repatriation carry particular urgency. With new writing by the exhibition curators and commissioned First Nations authors, the book offers both critical insight into Daniel Boyd's practice as well as creative and experimental responses to his work. Boyd has exhibited widely in Australia and recognised internationally with his Up in smoke tour exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London in 2011 (following his artist-in-residence there); inclusion in the 56th Venice Biennale All The World's Futures exhibition in 2015; and solo exhibition Treasure Island at the Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea in 2021. Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island is published in conjunction with the artist's first major exhibition to be held in an Australian public institution. The book will feature over 100 works from across his nearly two-decade career and includes new work and commissioned spatial interventions.

Denise Mimmocchi is senior curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her most recent exhibitions and publications include O¿Keeffe, Cossington Smith, Preston: Making Modernism (co-curator, 2016); Sydney Moderns: Art for a New World (with Deborah Edwards,2013); and Australian Symbolism: The Art of Dreams (2012).

Described as one of Australia's most inventive artists, Mikala Dwyer creates objects and installations that are both playful and provocative, re-imagining familiar materials and what they say to us about the world in which we live. Mikala Dwyer: A Shape of Thought looks at Dwyer's work over the past three decades documenting the evolution of her practice and her influences. Her work is characterized by a playful and excessive accumulation of elements - she has created installations out of fabric, play dough, stockings, felt, vinyl, plastic, organza and nail varnish. Her choice of materials has been identified as feminine and by extension as a subtle feminist critique of recent art history. However her teasing references to modernist abstraction, the more organic forms of minimalism and to pop art (such as the saggy Kenneth Noland-like target forms and Oldenburg-esque baggy vinyl shapes in 'Hanging eyes') are an acknowledgment of antecedents rather than necessarily having a critical agenda. Dwyer's highly engaging sculptures explore ideas about shelter, childhood play, modernist design and the relationship between people and objects. Often beguiling in their colour and profusion, her works incorporate raw materials and found objects in inventive and unexpected ways that transform their architectural settings.