Darren Siwes

Darren Siwes
Australian, born 1968
language group: Ngalkban

Just is a little lean to the right 2005
cibachrome print
Geelong Gallery
Gift of Jason Waple through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2018

Through a process of time-lapse photography Darren Siwes creates images of ghostly figures staged within built environments to explore issues of identity, Country, history, politics and duality. The semi-transparent figures—often the artist and his wife—make reference to Siwes’ Aboriginal and Dutch heritage: their ‘incompleteness’ acts as a visual metaphor for the lived experience of navigating two worlds. The complexity of familial heritage is conveyed through the stiff poses the figures adopt, here, in front of an historical building that represents colonisation.

The potency of this image resides in the shadow cast by his wife as an evocation of transience, but its bold opacity also suggests a stand against the passage of time, loss and change.