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Neon Parc acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung as the Traditional Owners and sovereign custodians of the Country on which we operate. We pay our deepest respects to their Elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

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Darren Sylvester
‘Sydney Contemporary 2026’
Carriageworks, Eora/Sydney, Booth A04
3 Sep.–6 Sep.
2026
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Neon Parc is excited to announce ‘Hot Cakes’, a solo presentation of new photographs by Darren Sylvester at Sydney Contemporary 2026.

I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in Darren Sylvester. A trickster. A conjurer. An artist who can dream up a world and make it disappear. Now, what if I go there too?

I’m heading off to heaven. A flock of blackbirds made from snippets of black plastic race towards a manufactured sun. Or is it God? Their pointed forms: a feathered death, an omen, the “unlucky” card in the deck. But surely, this isn’t where I’m meant to be. A change in weather. A purple sky. ‘PROMISE’ drifts through it, one letter at a time. These silver slivers of plastic lettering hang suspended midair. The word has the cool remove of Ed Ruscha, but here it feels more like a proposition than a statement, writ large across a dream.

Down below, the bubble gummer runs gleefully through a nameless cityscape, blind to where they’re going, caught in the moment of pre-pop. Could it, then, be aspiration? To keep going? Maybe I’m better off suspended in a tree, half-reading ‘Lord of the Flies’. I think of Wolfgang Tillmans’ Lutz and Alex sitting along the branches in their raincoats. For a moment, I forget that was a fashion shoot.

Darren Sylvester, 'Bubble Gummer', 2026. Archival inkjet print, 160 x 120 cm. Edition of 3 + 2 A/P.

I go looking for love and find it flashing directly in front of me: a pink heart, glowing like some lost anime talisman, hovering just beyond an outstretched hand. Close enough to touch, apparently. Then there’s the champagne tower. Glass after glass ascending toward a bright point at the top. I take one from the highest tier. Empty. Of course. It was only ever yellow light. A promise not kept.

I laugh it off when I realise Darren’s KFC girls from 2003 have become a Coca-Cola army. Berets, red cups, red lipstick, having an excellent time. I’m then taken to another group, three of them this time, circling close in around me, already in on the hug. Maybe I should be smiling too, joining the choreography. “In my Busby Berkeley dreams,” sing The Magnetic Fields.

A face-shaped fountain in the dark, two thin streams of water catching the light. Tears or benediction? Another message, perhaps. Or am I meant to calm down and listen to the harp? Profiles close in from either side, as if listening might make the message clearer.

So much for transcendence. I end up in IHOP, eating my funny face, made the same every day, every hour, by a worker I will never meet. The coffee is hot. It’s not even coffee. The table floats. It isn’t even a table. It’s all a stage. And still, I believe in Darren Sylvester.

— Chelsea Hopper, 2026

Chelsea Hopper is a curator and writer whose research centres on modern and contemporary photography. She recently completed a PhD in Curatorial Practice at Monash University, examining the intersection of populism and contemporary art. She is Art Director of Memo Magazine.

Exhibitions (7)
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