1. Works by Daniel Boyd:
1. Untitled, 2011, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
2. Untitled, 2012, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
3. Up in Smoke Tour, 2011, image courtesy of Roslyn Ox-
ley9 Gallery
4. Untitled, 2012, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
5. Handmade decorated box, found object, artist’s collec-
tion
6. Decommissioned boxes from Natural History Museum,
artist’s collection
7. Untitled, 2012, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
8. Untitled, 2011, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
9. Untitled, 2012, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
10. Untitled, 2011, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
11. Untitled, 2012, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
12. Untitled, 2012, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Objects from the Macleay
Cabinet 1.
European cranium with Phrenological markings; 1830s
Buffalo Stanley-Grimes, J, A new system of Phrenology,
1839
This skull dates to the 1830s during the very early stage of
the development of phrenology, a scientific method that
correlated personality and behaviour through measuring
cranium characteristic. This, now discredited, science was
pioneered by the German Neuroanatomist Franz Joseph
Gall.
Lorius solitarius; Ovalau Island, Fiji
Calliptilus solitarius Latham; Ovalau Island, Fiji
Throughout the southern hemisphere there are at least 350
species of parrots indigenous to central and South America,
Australia, Africa Asia and the South Pacific. Parrots figure
in the mythology of pirates and tropical paradises that per-
meated the northern hemisphere since the time of the colo-
nisation of the Americas. Daniel Boyd’s 2007 work – “We
call them pirates out here” featured Captain James Cook as
a pirate with eye patch and parrot on shoulder subverting
the historical representations of Cook as a heroic explorer.
Cabinet 2.
Helicina maugeriae Gray; Tahiti, French Polynesia
Helicina miniata Less; Tahiti, French Polynesia
Helicina rufescens; Tahiti, French Polynesia
These specimens were acquired in the early 20th century
by researchers associated with the Macleay Museum.
Cabinet 3.
4th edition London Hawkesworth, J An account of the
voyage.. Cook Volume 1 and Volume 4 (volume 4 exposing
the illustration of the Endeavour run aground in Qld).
Ballast Stone
This Ballast stone was jettisoned when the Endeavour
was being repaired in N.E. Qld. in 1770 near the present
day location of Agnes Waters on the far north coast of
Queensland. This site was also the location of one of the
first written documentation in English of an Aboriginal
language when speech sounds written down by the Cook
in his journal were transcribed from the Guugu Yimidhirr
language group.
Cabinet 4.
Telescope; 19th Century
Russell, H.C. London 1875 Observations made of the tran-
sit of Venus.
This telescope was held in Sydney University Archives and
used in the Macleay Museum Centenary exhibition, ‘Mr
Macleay’s Celebrated Cabinet’.
This exhibition was generously supported by:

2. “Also because it’s nice to talk like
everyone else, to say the sun rises, when
everybody knows it’s only a manner of
speaking” DELEUEZE AND GUATTARI,
A Thousand Plateaus.
A ballast stone from the Endeavor, shells gathered from
Tahiti, a human skull, a telescope, a series of rare books in-
cluding an 1893 edition of Captain Cook’s journal and 1875
edition of the Observations made of the transit of Venus,
some stuffed parrots – these are some of the items from the
collection at the Macleay Museum that will be on display in
the Tin Sheds Gallery during the exhibition The Transit of
Venus. These objects have been chosen by Daniel Boyd and
will be combined with his own paintings and video works to
explore the impact of the Transit on Australian history.
June 6, 2012, marks the second passing of the Transit of Ve-
nus since Australia was colonized in 1788. The Transit of
Venus is a rare astronomical event (that occurs in a repeat-
ing pattern of two transits separated by eight years every
243 years) that led Captain Cook to Tahiti, on his way to
Australia, in 1769.
The last Transit of Venus was observed in 2004 and the next
one after the 2012 transit will be in 2117. Observations of the
Transit of Venus were important for early scientists to en-
able them to determine the size of the universe. The desire
to measure and map the far reaches of the outer universe co-
incided with a desire to map and colonize the “new lands” of
Oceania and the South Pacific: a fact evidenced by Captain
Cook’s voyage on the Endeavour being jointly sponsored
by the Royal British Navy and the Royal Society (one of the
world’s oldest scientific organisations). This link is further
evidenced by the fact that Captain Cook was officially dis-
patched to Tahiti to observe the Transit - but his mission
included a “sealed packet” with subsequent instructions to
sail onto to Terra australis ingognita.
The Transit of Venus - An exhibition with Daniel Boyd pres-
ents an opportunity to revisit the consequences of Captain
Cook’s voyage on the Endeavor assessing its ramifications,
not just for the Aboriginal people of Australia, but also more
broadly for our understanding of the connections between
science, art and knowledge.
Boyd’s enigmatic paintings deliberately unsettle our ideas
about history by focusing on what is left out of the picture,
what is forgotten or what has been obscured. His works
for this exhibition are derived from a range of sources that
intuitively connect modern science with the early exploits
of Captain Cook - including pictures of the spaceship that
passed Venus, watercolours from the early colonial scientific
studies of Australia, images of “colonial booty” taken back to
England and images from the boxes that human body parts
were stored in at the Natural History Museum, London. In a
reversal of the logic of the colonial gaze Boyd layers a thick
texture of paint and glossy dots over these images obscur-
ing them almost entirely leaving the artist with the complete
picture and the viewer guessing from a fragmented residue.
The Transit
of Venus
Untitled, 2012, image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.
European cranium with Phrenological markings; 1830s, cour-
tesy of The Macleay Museum.
Boyd is interested in trade, science and systems of knowl-
edge - his work tracing the complex lineages of modernism.
The objects he has chosen from the Macleay collection reveal
moments of vulnerability in the armory of the colonists, for
example shells collected and meticulously labeled but now
held for their cultural rather then scientific value; human
remains once collected for their cultural value but now, with
advances in science, being DNA tested for possible repatria-
tion; and parrots collected by the early colonists for trade
between Indigenous cultures. These objects, combined with
his paintings, invite a reconsideration of the story of Aus-
tralia.
For Captain Cook and the Royal Society accurate data on the
transit of Venus was obtained by calibrating several obser-
vations, from various parts of the world, into single coordi-
nates thereby striating the world within a grid that forms the
basis of the modernism. This knowledge was used to both
map the far reaches of the cosmos and the expanding terrain
of colonization on earth: Naval Officers of the 18th century
akin to the astronauts of today, heading out into unknown
territories, hoping to bring back scientific discoveries and
glory for the home country.
But while Captain Cook has received credit for the ‘discov-
ery’ of Australia, it should also be noted that he relied on the
invaluable experience of the Tahitian navigational expert
Tupea to first find and survey a map of New Zealand and to
make his way across to the eastern coast of the Australian
mainland.
The role of astronomy in transforming the modern world
cannot be overestimated; it was only this century that one
of the founders of modern astronomy, Galileo Galilee, was
officially pardoned by the Church that denounced him as
a heretic over 400 years earlier for his insistence that the
earth revolved around the sun. But among the world’s In-
digenous peoples this knowledge is not that new, perhaps
the most famous example would be the Aztec Calendar that
clearly depicts the sun at the centre of our universe. Across
numerous Indigenous knowledge systems, in the Ameri-
cas, Australia, the Pacific Islands and the African continent,
there was an understanding of the relationship between the
sun, the planets and the earth – this knowledge was utilised
in creation stories, maps, such as the stick map depicted in
Daniel Boyd’s painting, and in the navigational prowess that
enabled Indigenous explorers to migrate across the vast dis-
tances of the sea.
On the occasion of this passing of the Transit of Venus we
can look again at the experiences of Indigenous and non-
Indigenous explorers, scientist and artists and revisit previ-
ously help assumptions about our place in the universe.
Curated by Matt Poll (Assistant Curator Indigenous Heri-
tage, Macleay Museum, The University of Sydney) and
Zanny Begg (Director Tin Sheds Gallery, faculty of Archi-
tecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney).
Public Programs:
June 14th 6.30pm
Tin Sheds Gallery
Human Remains: Museum Object or Crime Scene? A
discussion on the repatriation of human remains from
museum collections.
Daniel Boyd and Matt Poll, Sydney University Repatriation
Project.
June 21 6.30pm
Tin Sheds Gallery
Mapping the size of the Universe:
Observations from the 2012 Transit of Venus
Dr. Andrew Jacob, Astronomy Curator Sydney
Observatory, Powerhouse.
an exhibition with Daniel Boyd
11am – 5pm Tuesday to Saturday
148 City Road,
The Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning
The University of Sydney
9351 3115
blog: http://tinsheds.wordpress.com/