Matthew Warren

Born 1971, Burnie, Tasmania  

Matthew Warren is part of the emerged technopop generation that thrives on spectacle, fragmentary logic and altered psychic experience. In Warren's case, the rave aesthetic translates into a gothic multi–media production, ushering digitalized video and sound performance into a new Romantic age of self–inquiry. Romanticism, as we know, thrives best in brooding, primal landscapes and what could be more Ur than the Tasmanian wilds? In Warren's mind, Western Canada runs a close second and so we see his homage to TWIN PEAKS, THE X–FILES and to the dark, freaky spaces of imagination paved by the Kafkaesque Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg.

Hmm. A century of out–of–control art, an epoch of scientific revolution gone wild and science fiction still holds us in its charge. I'd say that's a pretty good guide to the future.

M.A. Greenstein from her Samstag catalogue essay, Back to the Future – From Wry to Rave
 
1999 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship
1999 MFA, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada 
1995 Graduate Diploma of Art, Craft & Design, University of Tasmania, Hobart 
1994 Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Tasmania, Hobart Awards