Brad Darkson is a multidisciplinary artist who works across medias, including carving, video, sound, animation, sculpture, painting and site-specific installation. Cultural-revival-activism permeates his practice; his work focuses on the connections between contemporary and traditional cultural practices, language and lore. His current research interests include traditional land management practices, bureaucracy, seaweed, and the neo-capitalist hellhole we're all forced to exist within.
Conceptually, Brad’s work is informed by his First Nations and Anglo Australian heritage. His mob on his Dad's side is the Chester family, with lineages to Narungga (Point Pearce) and many other Nations in South Australia from Ngarrindjeri (Raukkan) to Far West Coast (Poonindie, Sheringa) and Nyungar (Annesfield, Albany WA). On his Mum's side, he is a descendant of the Colley and Ball convict and settler migrant families, both arriving by ship–the Duchess of Northumberland–in 1839.
Since graduating in 2017, Darkson has exhibited extensively nationally as well as internationally and is currently undertaking a PhD, with a focus on First Nations seaweed management practices, at Flinders University. In 2019, alongside his wife, marine biologist Dr Chloe Darkson, Brad founded the social enterprise Moonrise Seaweed Co. This family business has garnered national and international support to regenerate Country and prioritise First Nations environmental leadership.
