Silverscreen 2006

Callum Morton explores our relationship to the built environment. Addressing both iconic modernist buildings and vernacular architecture, his works present architectural spaces as sets for personal narratives, social histories and invented stories.

Silverscreen is from a series of sculptures inspired by outdoor cinema screens. The drive-in cinema originated in the golden age of Modernism, an era of consumer affluence; here, Morton uses his scaled model to explore themes of destruction, decay and visual representation. The literally silver screen is peppered with bullet-like holes and reminiscent of a vandalised outback road sign. Art historian Edward Colless states that Morton’s models are ‘a bit like Pandora’s boxes: exquisite enclosures harbouring delicious evil and violence’. In Silverscreen, Morton subtly subverts a structure on which our dreams, fears and desires are projected.