Neon Parc

Darren Sylvester works across a wide range of disciplines including staged, prop-built photographs, sculptures, music and installations, embedded with commercial pop cultural reference tinged with ennui. In his large-scale photographs which resemble luxury commercial photography, he co-opts the language of consumer aspiration for his own ends. Various references including film, fashion, pop music videos, consumerism and capitalism come together in works that maintain a disquieting balance between the convincingly real and strangely artificial. The scenes in each photograph are constructed with laborious intensity, ultimately becoming frozen narratives (a plane flying into a clouded sunset; a crouching basketball player; models become pirates) with enigmatic and ambiguous poignancy. His work wryly brings low consumerism with high art, broadening the intersection between the commonplace, branded desires and sexual suggestion.

In 2019 his work was the subject of a major survey exhibition and monograph at NGV Australia, titled ‘Carve a Future, Devour Everything, Become Something’. Selected recent group exhibitions include ‘Maria Kozic x Darren Sylvester’, Neon Parc, Melbourne (2023); the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: ‘Free/State’, (2022); and ‘The National’ at Carriageworks, NSW (2021).

His work is held in most state and regional museums in Australia, in addition to significant private and corporate collections in Australia and internationally.