Black, white and many hues beyond

By Ashley Crawford
March 5, 2005
Darren Siwes with one of his London photos, <EM>The Horse Hospital</EM>.

Darren Siwes with one of his London photos, The Horse Hospital.
Photo: Cathryn Tremain

A well-dressed couple stand somewhat incongruously in front of a rusted rural tin shed, the grass surrounding them burnt and red. What little light there is casts deep shadows, emphasising the stillness of the image.

The man is to the fore in a formal suit jacket, the woman to the rear in a summer dress. One can almost sense the heat of an Australian evening pulsing off the cooling corrugated iron.

But elsewhere the same couple stand in front of a Tudor-style brick building. The image is coloured in cool yellows, the limestone structure solid but buffeted by time. Here the woman stands to the fore, claiming the territory as her own, while the male stands several feet behind her.

In both images the figures are masked, solitary representatives of what appears to be a carefully planned ritual.

Indeed, Darren Siwes' work is imbued with notions of ritual, where place and location are almost more potent than the actors on his stage. His glossy Cibachrome photographs are concocted to capture, as far as it is possible, the potency of place - whether the aged, sprawling streetscapes of urban London or the heat-blasted exteriors of the Adelaide hills.

His actors - Siwes himself and his wife - are positioned to reflect more than theatrical impact: when these images are concocted in Europe, Siwes' wife stands to the fore, her European lineage almost earning her that right. Siwes takes the frontal position when captured in Australia, reflecting his indigenous blood.

But racial identity is only a small part of the complex intellectual and dramatic discourse his work aims to embrace. The worlds of philosophy and history collide here, referencing a range of ideas from Plato's Republic, with its vision of a utopian society, through to the work of Sir Frances Galton, the British scientist who was among the first in the late 19th century to investigate the differences in mental ability.

Galton came to believe that some human abilities derived from hereditary factors, and founded the eugenics movement, which sought to improve the human species through selective breeding of gifted individuals.

"A lot of those kinds of things were happening in the late 1800s," says Siwes. "In many ways, the ideas represented a kind of potential caste system in Europe based on the eugenics movement."

Of course it took little time for eugenics to be applied directly to race.

"Sir Frances was a statistician and had little time for cultural differences," says Siwes. "It was Galton who coined the term 'nature versus nurture'."

Eugenics, of course, became racially based in a number of dubious quarters. "Over time, testing for intelligence changed from task-oriented subjects and physical tests - how well a person could detect differences between weights, colours, smells and other physical stimuli - to more general knowledge."

"This all inspired me to figure out what intelligence is and what it has to do with cultural relations. I've been teaching in an Aboriginal college for six years and I realised that what is most important is the ability, if possible, to be bi-cultural, the ability to move across cultures."

In some respects, Siwes latest series of work, Just Is, reflects this cultural divide in quite a literal sense, with the previously mentioned positioning of his wife to the fore in the European settings and him taking precedence in Australia.

Of course it is not that black and white, as it were. Siwes grew up in urban Adelaide with a background that involved a mother of Russian, Filipino and Aboriginal blood while his father was Dutch.

"In Australian culture, I am placed into the banner of being an indigenous artist," he says. "I don't have to choose to say that, it's what happens in the art world. That's not to say that I don't want to be seen as an indigenous artist, but it becomes a matter of context."

In 2002, Siwes was awarded the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, which enabled him to travel to Europe. He relished the chance to travel to places where his indigenous blood would be all but unrecognisable. "I loved the idea of being anonymous," he says.

Reflecting Siwes' belief that difference is culture-based, he found he could fit in to various niches in London when he worked to raise extra cash for further travel.

"If I was working with Pakistanis and played cricket, I was Pakistani. If I worked with Indians and liked Indian food, I could fit in. But because of my background, I can also fit into the university system in Australia."

The problem was faced by his cousins.

"When my wife's uncle lived in Fitzroy Crossing his two kids were the only white kids there. When they moved to Geraldton they had a lot of trouble fitting in," Siwes says.

But, in at least one aspect of his life, Siwes also has some degree of fitting in to do. His urban upbringing and mixed blood, and his intellectual rationalisations, preclude him from joining in the more traditional aspects of his indigenous past, its rituals and customs.

"I don't feel I have the right," he says. "I'm not from that culture. I don't know if I could keep those secrets, the things that need to be kept secret, if those were passed down to me."

Siwes became involved in photography as a way of preparing images for painting. The camera soon took over. But, unlike many of his contemporaries, Siwes is a die-hard traditionalist when it comes to photography, suffering disastrous five-minute exposures, struggling to find the right natural light and eschewing technical gimmickry such as Photoshop.

"I like the idea of tackling something that maybe you could do more easily in Photoshop but doing it by hand," he says.

"I've always found the best results are on Cibachrome, which requires having a transparency. It might take four or five shoots and I'll get the trannies back and see all the mistakes and have to reconstruct the way I've tackled the image. But it's definitely worth it."

Darren Siwes: Just Is. is at Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra until March 12.