Darren_Siwes_Artistic_Intentions

Question 1-Practice Refer to the resources supplied. Discuss the artist’s intentions and how they approach their artmaking. (500 words) Darren Siwes is an Australian Artist who uses photography as his medium to express ideas such as not belonging and the feeling of dislocation. Siwes expresses these ideas through various photographical techniques, such as the colours and amount of light he uses, multiple exposures and through the landscapes he deliberately chooses. Siwes use of colour is fairly limited in the majority of his shots. The lack of colour adds a sense of drama and suspense that couldn't have been felt if Siwes used a wide variety of colour in his work. The main source of colour in his works comes from streetlights or lamps in houses which cast a dim, yellowish shade over the work. This is seen in his work, One Night at Mount Lofty, where the only colour is shown through the lamps captured in this photograph. Quite often Siwes keeps his artwork black and white adding to this dramatic effect and therefore almost heightening the sense of dislocation, giving off a very serious, sombre atmosphere. He creates this lack of colour by using black and white film or colour film with a low ISO level, allowing for less light within his photographs and, hence, less colour. This whole art making process helps Siwes to present his intentions to the audience. In nearly all of his works Siwes uses multiple exposures (generally a double exposure) where one photo is taken and then another on top of it. This process may be done numerous times and doesn't only have to be done digitally. An example of this may be seen in his work, Trained Man where a semi-transparent figure is seen in front of the railway platform. To my knowledge, Siwes doesn't digitally edit his photographs. The double exposure was simply done on his film camera. Siwes has evidentially set up his camera on a tripod, taken a photo of a landscape with a figure standing in it (commonly, the photographs featured himself and occasionally his wife) using a self timer, then taken a photo of that same landscape without the figure with possibly a longer exposure time, leaving the figure with a lack of substance, giving the audience a sense of melancholy, thus adding to Siwes' original intentions of expressing the feeling of dislocation. Finally, Siwes carefully selects the landscapes he uses to reflect the era of British colonisation in Australia. This is the time period that Siwes has a special link with because of his Dutch/Aboriginal background. His careful choosing of landscapes may be viewed in his work, Pre Sense, which is actually a photograph taken in the United Kingdom, however, the photograph still aims to represent this period of time. Siwes aims to challenge the audience about this period of time which is why it is important he carefully chooses these landscapes to fit this era. Through the landscapes he tries to communicate the dislocation that the British people would have felt at the time when they were taking over a land owned by Aboriginal people. His choosing of landscapes is especially crucial to his art marking process as without it, much meaning would be lost In conclusion, Siwes is an artist who relies greatly on his art making process to communicate the messages he focuses on in his artworks. This is evident in all of his works which strongly depict an illusion of dislocation through the various processes he goes through. Word Count: 566