Oak Effect is a new commission by artist Matthew Darbyshire. This large scale installation features a range of artefacts from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums. The only thing they have in common is that they are made from wood and were chosen by the artist after extensive research in Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums’ object stores and archives.

The artist has curated the objects within a modern interior of a one bedroom flat which is entirely constructed of oak effect veneer that acts as a pedestal for the objects.

Matthew Darbyshire says: “After mocking up various interiors that reflect and critique our situation today, I arrived at this ‘oak effect’ which, according to my research, seems to be the single most common finish that evades associations of class, nationality, demographic and identity, and seems in fact to have become as universally common as wood itself.

“Situating these museum artefacts alongside each other within a generic contemporary landscape creates an atmosphere of both reverence and distrust: a juxtaposition of real and synthetic that sets up a tension between the real and the artificial that makes us question authenticity.”

The breadth of objects chosen by the artist range in date from the 1600s to the 20th century and include Polynesian ceremonial paddles, a Marcel Breuer chaise longue, truncheons, a Singer sewing machine, Burmese Buddha figures, a Victorian electric shock machine and a 17th century Swiss mace.

All the objects on show have been loaned from the collections of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, including Newcastle’s Discovery Museum, the Great North Museum and art galleries including the Hatton Gallery and the Shipley Art Gallery.

The installation was displayed at Bloomberg Space, London in April 2013 and is a collaboration between Bloomberg SPACE, Tramway Glasgow and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.

Matthew Darbyshire was born in the UK in 1977. He studied Fine Art at the Slade School of Art and at the Royal Academy Schools in London. Darbyshire has had solo exhibitions at Gasworks, London; The Hayward Project Space, London; Herald Street, London; Tramway, Glasgow; Taro Nasu, Tokyo and Jousse Enterprise, Paris. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions across Europe, Asia and America. Darbyshire has exhibited in various major UK survey shows including the ICA’s Nought to Sixty programme curated by Mark Slaydon in 2008, Tate Britains Triennial Altermodern, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud in 2009, and the British Art Show 7 Days of the Comet, curated by Tom Morton and Lisa Le Feuvre 2010.

Matthew is currently the teaching fellow on the graduate sculpture programme at the Slade School of Art, London. Darbyshire is represented by Herald Street, London and lives and works in London.

All images installation views, Oak Effect by Matthew Darbyshire. Photograph by Stephen White

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