Director's Comment

In 1959, together with brother Arthur, David Boyd was a signatory to the Antipodean Manifesto and participated in the subsequent exhibition. This was a landmark exhibition and a statement by the participating artists against the move to abstractionism. Boyd explored a number of themes that evolved as quite significant works, including the powerful Trial series, the Tasmanian Aborigines, the Wanderer and Exiles series.

Picturing innocence and evil, destruction and creation, his works convey mythical and universal themes. The Trial series was continued while he lived in Rome in 1962 before settling in London, and were the theme of his first one-man shows in London and Paris in 1963. This series, expressed ideas about fundamental and disturbing features of the human condition; Tasmanian Aborigines series, referred to the extinction of pureblood Tasmanian Aborigines in the nineteenth century; Wanderer series,was inspired by the life of Benjamin Boyd, an Australian adventurer of the 1840s.