|
|
|
| Darren Sylvester’s carefully staged photographs appear to comment on social conformity and isolation, particularly among the relationships of the young and aspirational middle class. Critics – myself included – have been inclined to read his images as a critique of the superficial inanity of advertising and the beauty industry. However, Sylvester’s embrace of the unblemished global consumer culture he depicts is strangely sincere. In this sense, he is almost unique among Australian artists: his pop existentialism stands outside both the mode of postmodern critique and even its more recent shift to cool indifference. While his photographs belong to the now familiar directorial paradigm, Sylvester’s working process is also distinctive; it involves a systematic distillation of emotional experience into stories which are then condensed into a single line that becomes an all-important title. Recently, themes of meaninglessness and mortality have appeared with increasing frequency – as in the chosen works in which Sylvester explores time’s always encroaching embrace. After following Darren Sylvester’s work for a decade, I remain fascinated. Daniel Palmer Monash University |
 |
 |
 |
 |
