Brad Darkson

Hold Me | 18 Aug – 18 Sept – Samstag Museum of Art

Biography

Brad Darkson is a South Australian visual artist working across various media including sound, sculpture, multimedia installation, and painting. Darkson’s practice is regularly results in site-specific works, and his current research interests include technology, surveillance, identity, ritualised human behaviour, and the neo-capitalist hellhole we’re all forced to exist within. Conceptually Darkson’s work is often informed by strong ties to both his Narungga First Nations and Anglo Australian heritage.

Award Submission

Brad Darkson’s multimodal practice has a longstanding interest in sound, ritual and brutalist structures of bureaucracy. In Hold Me, listeners are invited to pick up a domestic Telstra handset and listen in on a frustrated phone conversation between Darkson’s family and a Centrelink worker trying to unravel the ramifications of a robo-debt, interspersed by the relentless sound of the hold music. How long the listener waits is a part of this experiment in patience and frustration with systemic architectures that keep users removed and disengaged from their social agency, highlighting the divide between domestic and bureaucratic identities.