Expanding upon the legacy of Aboriginal dot painting, History is Made at Night draws upon recent philosophical and scientific advancements relating to the existence of dark matter. The project acknowledges the varying histories of navigational possibilities afforded by stars, but by way of update, reintroduces the universe as the very mechanism navigating our more expanded sense of history as well as its trajectory into the future. As the universe incrementally expands, our capacity to define any sense of its, and implicitly our, origin is confounded by our inability to determine any sense of its full definition. This is exemplified within the large-scale painting within History is Made at Night, with its legacy in dot painting, but with Boyd’s dots functioning as a series of lenses to the obscured painted surface lying beneath. Such a reading also references the attempt of museums to amass encyclopedic collections, be they of art or artifact, yet ever only capable of doing so through a selective and illustrative gaze, enabling more of a collection of lenses through which to garner a broader sense of historical moments and periods. Expanding on from this in a monumental way the immersive video environment serves to function as a dynamic portal through which to look at the universe not as a static scape but rather as an infinitely expanding system.

Image courtesy: © Daniel Boyd, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery Sydney and Kalimanrawlins, Melbourne