Daniel Boyd: Untitled (AEYTMCES) Print

Daniel Boyd
Untitled (AEYTMCES)
2026
Woodcut print on black 280gsm paper

For Artspace Editions, Daniel Boyd has created a new limited-edition woodcut print centred on the motif of the ‘drowning man’, drawn from the colonial myth of the Inland Sea and a recurring reference in the work of Australian artist Gordon Bennett (1955–2014). Explorers undertook gruelling and often fatal expeditions into the Australian interior in search of a vast inland body of water that did not exist. Instead of the promised paradise, they encountered harsh, dry landscapes, revealing the Inland Sea as a geographic fiction born of colonial delusion. The first print of its kind in Boyd’s practice, the work marks a significant development of his distinctive visual language in print.

The edition is the result of an extended period of development and experimentation. Printed in now-discontinued silver ink, using real metallic leafing pigments on black 280gsm paper, the work is built through the interplay of reflective silver and negative space, destabilising the distinction between figure and ground. Boyd’s drawing and signature ‘oculi’ meld into a single field of mark-making, with more than 1,000 individually articulated oculi forming a shifting surface in which forms emerge, dissolve and resist easy recognition.

Through this distinctive use of the oculi, Boyd complicates the act of looking, as drawing, light and negative space continually shift in and out of view. The image remains partial and unresolved, drawing attention to the ways images can shape perception while resisting a singular or fixed reading.

Produced in a strictly limited edition, and developed through a collaborative printmaking process with Artspace and the printmaking department at the National Art School (NAS), the edition extends Boyd’s interrogation of how images reproduce, obscure and reshape the histories we inherit.

– 50 × 70 cm
– Edition of 50 + 10 APs
– Produced in collaboration with the National Art School
© Daniel Boyd

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Photos: Hamish McIntosh