Art Forum: 'Darlinghurst Eats its Young', a short film by Madeleine Preston

This week in Art Forum, artist, curator and musician Anthony Bautovich, Madeleine Preston’s partner and co-director of Home@735 Gallery, will introduce and screen Preston’s short film Darlinghurst Eats Its Young.

Madeleine Preston (1968 – 2022) was a Sydney artist, filmmaker and co-director of Home@735 Gallery whose practice moved across painting, photography, installation, ceramics and moving image. She was also a much loved and respected teacher at the National Art School. Her work explored memory, loss and the ways personal and collective histories are constructed, remembered and forgotten.

Based on a box of photographs left to Madeleine after her friend Maggie died by suicide, Darlinghurst Eats Its Young is a deeply personal reflection on a group of friends, artists and musicians living in inner-city Darlinghurst in the early 1980s. Combining archival photographs, narration and an evocative soundtrack featuring artists including Wet Taxis and Systematics, the film traces themes of friendship, art, music, addiction and loss.

Initially exhibited in the Sedition barber shop window on Darlinghurst Road in 2010, the Darlinghurst Eats Its Young project evolved over 15 years through exhibitions in Sydney, Launceston and Melbourne before culminating in this short film. Madeleine recorded the narration for the film just two weeks before her death.

Image: Image: Madeleine Preston, Darlinghurst Eats its Young, still, 2010