Darbyshire tries to define how our belongings provide us with a desired image of ourselves via mass production. He evokes the use of branding, by fashionably re-moulding stylistic boiler suits that we associate with hard manual labour into unusual structures. This is his own role in the process of gentrification; he provocatively repackages the homogenisation of contemporary design and questions what it exactly is that makes it so appealing.
By replicating icons that dominate western lifestyles and lifestyle aspirations, it seems he is seduced by the idea of fabricating the same styles and fetishist fashions that represents today. He conceives these sculptures in relation to materialism, the idea that we are what we buy, and so using them as a form of portraiture.
Matthew Darbyshire, Standardised Production Clothing Version (4) (2009)
