Details
| First Name | Matthew |
| Last Name | da Silva |
| Username | matthew-da-silva |
| Bio | I came to art following 35 years working in offices, mainly doing editorial work including desktop publishing but also including a stint freelancing as a journalist. I wanted to do art when I was a teenager but had a choice at school between studying French or art because of the timetable. Dad didn’t let me drop French so I went to uni, got a BA, started working, made a family and relocated to Japan for my career. Once back home I completed a second degree, in journalism. In 2022 I started making paramontages and established the Eastern Suburbs Art Group. “Paramontage” is a portmanteau word coined by an old school friend Andrew Adair, a poet, and describes works that are a synthetic combination of poetry and photographs. I started making watercolours in November 2022 and was in a group show (‘Colour as a plot device’) in August 2023 at Laerk Space in Sydney. I had my first solo show in November 2023, ‘Media of mass psychology’, at the same gallery. In Feb 2024 I had a solo show at Tiliqua Tiliqua in Sydney, ‘Dark alphabet’, and I had a solo show in Goulburn, ‘Gold 4WD’ in March 2024. A book of poetry, ‘Gold 4WD’ was published on Amazon in January 24. I was in group shows in early 2024 in New York and London, was selected for inclusion in a World Pride group show at Tiliqua Tiliqua in late Feb/early Mar 2024, and took part in the ‘Magenta’ show at Tiliqua Tiliqua in April ’24. In 2025 I will be in a show in Madrid, Artist Experience run by Espacio Triple. |
| Website | |
| Country of residence | Australia |
Statement
| Statement | I am interested in the ways that reality is constructed through the manufacture of stories under the power of commercial prerogatives. I use cast-off materials in order to give new life to what otherwise would be dismissed as rubbish. I drive around Sydney in my hybrid SUV picking up boxes of excess magazines from households that have advertised them for collection on Facebook Marketplace (a free service available to anyone who has a Facebook account). I also use reject photographic prints, which get repurposed in paintings. My watercolours often refer overtly to popular culture, particularly advertising, which takes up such a prominent position in our lives but which is normally ignored by the culture industries. Advertising on the other hand pays a lot of attention to the culture industries, borrowing styles and tropes freely in order to key into people’s lives. The use of words and collage naturally suggests this nexus of money and signs since language and the magazines that distribute it throughout the community are an intimate part of part of consumer culture, and in fact sustain and are sustained by it. My “paramontages” expand on these concerns, paramontage a word coined by an old school friend named Andrew Adair, who is a Canberra poet. These are synthetic combinations of poetry and photography and they are professionally printed in Sydney. I use photographs and a piece of freeware – software that is available for download on the internet without charge, a practice escaping the cash nexus, freeing creative impulses without the burden of financial expense – to make creative montages as well without words, but layering images and colour to attain complex objectivities that put consumer culture at the creative centre. |