Matthew Blackburn’s artwork arms you the controller to your individual childhood

The 2000s appear to be having a second. That decade is in every single place. In our garments and music, in our conversations. Even in artwork and design. Many people are pining for a second we both skilled firsthand or want we had.

What’s it about that period that sparks a lot love? Nostalgia is a misleading factor. It makes us look again by rose-tinted glasses, usually forgetting why now may be higher. However maybe that is not fairly what is going on on right here. As Johannesburg painter Matthew Blackburn sees it, nostalgia is a extra difficult emotion than easy consolation. His nonetheless life artworks show it.

Simply check out ‘Saturday Morning 2001’. He is painted a bed room by a fisheye lens, warped on the edges like an previous cathode-ray telly used to indicate your favorite programme – supplying you with a first-person view. You are actually holding the controller to a different life. You might be, in each sense, enjoying as a youthful model of your self.

Why this theme? It started with a quick. The portray was made for Tomorrow is Listening – a bunch present at Rust-en-Vrede Gallery in Durbanville, Cape City, primarily based on recollections and “reminiscence retaining”. “I’ve all the time been drawn to nostalgia,” he tells Artistic Growth, “so I needed to include material that will remind me of my childhood, notably video video games and skateboarding. From there, I made a decision to recreate my childhood bed room, utilizing cliché pop icons to push the retro, nostalgic environment of my work. That then advanced right into a recreation inside a recreation, giving the viewers the controller and inserting them within the first-person perspective.” It is a easy flip, however it throws us proper again to that reminiscence, when all that mattered was making it to the following stage.

Subsequent comes ‘Sunday Morning 2001’, a pared-back model of the identical concept. On nearer inspection, you may discover the colors of the Froot Loops within the bowl echo the 4 basic symbols on the PlayStation controller sitting beside them. The identical palette of inexperienced, pink, blue, and that specific cyan. That is deliberate. “My planning often begins off very primary, just a few tough sketches, simply to start out conceptualising what the structure could also be,” he explains. “I then collect an assortment of props and arrange a scene the place I take a number of reference images, interchanging the completely different props, altering lighting and retaining in thoughts the compositional instruments to create a visually satisfying work.

“From that, I exploit my reference photos to seek out my color palettes, mixing colors and sometimes exaggerating sure hues to assist create color and distinction. I work out the structure, sketch the whole lot in with pencil, and solely then does the portray start.”

He works in acrylic on hardboard, a fast-drying medium he is spent years perfecting. He builds layers of refined brush marks till the floor reads as photographic. The completed works are then framed in museum-style gold. This leads properly to my subsequent statement: Matthew is impressed by the previous masters.

Vanitas would possibly seem to be an odd dwelling for PS1 controllers, however Matthew thinks in any other case. The previous Dutch custom of nonetheless lifes is often filled with skulls, candles and overripe fruit, reminding us that we’re all going to die. However in Matthew’s work, he tries to convey one thing else. “Vanitas was a method for artists to convey messages related to the instances,” he says. “By utilizing these modern-day objects, I can enchantment to and relate to a extra up to date viewers whereas nonetheless sustaining a classical really feel in my work. The mass-produced objects additionally enable me to handle themes equivalent to consumerism and dependancy.”

You will discover genie lamps and grapes on one facet of an art work, Rubik’s cubes and cereal on the opposite. His present physique of labor, ‘Golden Age’, continues this – work have titles like ‘Vacancy’ and ‘Extinguished’. Darkish themes, he admits. However not, he is cautious to level out, pessimistic ones. He’d reasonably they immediate a little bit of self-reflection than gloom. So that is the place nostalgia stops being cosy.

Nostalgia is a posh emotion. You could be glad and unhappy on the similar time.

“There’s positively a stage of consolation in it; that’s a part of the explanation why folks rewatch films or play previous video video games,” he continues. “Nostalgia is a posh emotion. You could be glad and unhappy on the similar time. Joyful you bought to expertise one thing, however unhappy that you’ll by no means get to expertise it the identical method once more. It is a reminder of the transience of life.”

What’s severely spectacular about Matthew is that he is fully self-taught. He left college in 2012 and did not go full-time as an artist till late 2020. He entered Sasol New Signatures, one among South Africa’s longest-running artwork competitions, yearly from 2021, making the highest 100 two years in a row, earlier than lastly taking a benefit award within the prime seven in 2023 with a portray titled ‘Suffocation’.

“As discouraging as it may be, I by no means noticed the close to misses as a failure however reasonably a chance to enhance my work,” he says. “Early on in my profession, an artist who I love defined to me that artwork contests are a raffle, the celebrities must line up, and the judges must all agree on a single art work. So there may be a number of luck concerned; nonetheless, the tougher you’re employed, the luckier you’ll grow to be.”

Since then, Matthew has loved media consideration and, crucially, galleries and collectors are actually knocking on his door. He is additionally picked up second place on the Vuleka artwork competitors in 2025, made the Portrait Awards prime 40 twice, accomplished a residency at Rosemary Hill, and proven in every single place from the Pretoria Artwork Museum to the RMB Latitudes Artwork Truthful.

Trying once more at ‘Saturday Morning 2001’, the portray that caught my eye, he desires to depart us with this query: “In case your future self could be enjoying your present self in a online game, wouldn’t it be a recreation price enjoying?”

Deep stuff, and Matthew solutions the query himself: “I am doing what I like, what I am obsessed with. I get to color daily, and I do not plan on slowing down anytime quickly, so I am positive my future self shall be more than pleased to be enjoying that recreation.”