Don Cameron is an Australian director, designer and visual artist. Graduating from Central St Martins College of Art, London with 1st Class Honors, his career began as a director of music videos, creating defining works for British recording artists Pet Shop Boys, Garbage and Blur. His filmography has become the subject of exhibitions and in the case of Blur’s ‘Music is my Radar’, archived in the permanent collection of the British Film Institute. Working in the world of material culture has produced a devotion to outcome and a symmetrical high standard of idea and technique. Cameron’s film oeuvre engages architecture, objects and furniture to compose compelling visual narratives. Crafting unique atmospheres through mise–en–scène has been central to his practice as has his influences, rooted in the obscure, marginalized and aberrant.
In 2010, Don Cameron’s auteur approach to film crossed mediums to find concrete form in the built environment. Translating knowledge, he approached the design of interiors and objects with a film vocabulary which endowed spaces with instant histories through his understanding of object and emotion; architecture and memory.
In 2020, Cameron was invited by Sydney contemporary design and art focused gallerist, Sally Dan-Cuthbert, to exhibit an exceptional body of work. The exhibition ‘Communion’ (GSDC, August 2020), comprised a photomedia series depicting Brutalist buildings designed for protection, memory and salvation researched and encountered over the course of a twenty year period.
His following solo show ‘Translations’ (GSDC, September 2022) sees Cameron translate these atmospheres from the photographic to the functional, creating a range of furnishings that take inspiration from the forms and atmospheres of the works he lensed.
Cameron’s artistic segue through film, interior, visual art and object design can be described as accumulative with each change of state delivering more than the medium promises. In this way, a designed interior becomes an inhabitable narrative conversely, his 20 year project ‘Communion’ crystallizes time, histories, obsolescence and indifference in a single image.
Cameron continues to expand his oeuvre across media.
