06/10/2026
Final week to see Man on Fire: Visions of Nebuchadnezzar, featuring work by Arthur Boyd and Shaun Gladwell.
In the story of King Nebuchadnezzar, he has a series of unsettling dreams which reveal his unchecked and self-aggrandising pride, ultimately leading to his banishment into the wilderness. Stripped of all his wealth and power, the King is unmade, ‘drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.’ After much suffering and a reckoning for his transgressions, the King is restored into God’s grace and returns to the human world.
In Boyd’s paintings, Nebuchadnezzar is seen tormented, writhing in despair, set upon by wild animals or battered by lightning, rain and fire. In other works, Nebuchadnezzar has undergone a transformation and is at peace; succumbing to his isolation, he is at one with the natural world. Whilst some images hint at his future redemption, Boyd’s Nebuchadnezzar is predominantly characterised as a man at breaking point, his agency removed, barely surviving in a stark and unforgiving wilderness.
The exhibition explores this narrative across major paintings, ink drawings and etchings by Boyd and Gladwell, forming a meditation on unbounded ego and the fragility of the human condition.
📆 On until Sunday 11 October
Photos: Zan Wimberley
