Daniel A'Vard is a Porepunkah-based artist whose practice is an exploration of perception — his own, and ultimately the viewer's. His work reaches toward a version of reality that hovers just beyond what the senses can name: not imagined, but glimpsed. He is drawn to the territory the contemplative traditions have always known — that beneath the surface of what we see lies something older, deeper, and more alive than our ordinary vision can hold. His practice is an attempt to find form for that encounter.

The works begin in his own act of reaching, and remain unresolved even after they are made. That incomprehension is not a failure — it is the material. Like the great mystics who wrote not to explain God but to trace the edges of an experience that exceeded language, Daniel makes not to represent reality but to register his collision with it. The result is work that is simultaneously autobiographical and universal: rooted in one person's contemplative encounter, but opening outward into questions every viewer carries. Where do the boundaries of the real actually lie? What sits just beyond the threshold of perception? What might we find if we stayed still long enough to look?

His materials carry distinct registers: fabric and natural pigments speak to fragility, tactility, and the ephemeral nature of the world we inhabit; photography and paint reach toward awe and wonder. Together they map the edges of perception — not to explain what lies beyond, but to hold open the question.

Daniel holds a Master of Fine Arts from RMIT (2022–2024). His solo exhibition The Way Forward is Back has toured multiple venues including Glen Eira Gallery (2024) and Wodonga Cube (2025), with earlier exhibitions at St Cath's Arts Precinct (2023) and Brunswick West (2022). Group exhibitions include seasonal shows at Bright Art Gallery (2024–2025), the RMIT Graduate Show (2023), and Between Reality and Dreamland (Fitzroy, 2023). He curated WEIGHT at Bright Art Gallery (2025) and his work features in multiple published photobook anthologies.

Daniel is also an advocate of Makoto Fujimura’s concept of Culture Care and works alongside communities in Regional Australia to build connection through creativity and finding common ground across communities through his organisation Regional Culture Care Australia.

He lives and works on the unceded lands of the Waywurru, Taungurung and Dhuduroa Peoples