The artist contemplates the irony of a society desperately seeking socialisation and togetherness despite conjuring increasingly more outlandish digital personas. “Five Minutes To Famous” examines our collective craving for acknowledgement and virtual accolades, which we seek merely just for existing in highly stylised photographic bubbles (that are strategically hashtagged for maximum audience reach).

Matthew Quick’s visual interpretation of the highly gilded selfie vignettes that we release into the world - so many of which broadcast how incredibly #onfleek we are or how our latest rant is the result of having #nofilter – offer the beholder a tongue-in-cheek perspective of online life that is nonetheless softened with a touch of stirring relatability. Every one of us has fallen into the trap of manufacturing aesthetic fairytales for follower approval. As arrogant as our enthusiastically embraced cultural practice can sometimes be, it points to humanity’s need to feel as though we somehow matter during our brief blip in the timeline of history.

It is no coincidence that the shape and visual aesthetic of his metallic canvas echoes that of a garden-variety, cellphone-captured image. Matthew Quick’s decadently gilded, high beam backdrops – as alluring to gaze at as celebrities voguing on the red carpet – set off the matte visages of his camera-loving sculptural entities like a reinforces the idea that his glorified subjects are stars in their own minds by engineering his pieces to facilitate the circulation of light behind them.

Once we adjust to the painter’s dazzling, pseudo-digitalised backdrops, we quickly dial into the seemingly nonchalant gazes of his canvas stars while they don the latest fuzzy-eared, floral-flourished filters. A moment passes and then the truth sinks in. His stone busts actually mirror the collective ‘we’. While we may initially imagine that they are casually captured during moments of unassuming reflection, their classic cookie-cutter selfie poses suggest otherwise. Anyone who has fed the social media beast knows that establishing and maintaining digital reverence requires manufacturing endless new looks. Even if our perceived acceptance is nothing more than an inner fantasy, there comes a point when we revert back to the same old pedestrian poses due to sheer exhaustion and utter lack of inspiration.

Matthew Quick adds further quirk and circumstance to “Five Minutes To Famous” by transforming conventionally painted canvases into dynamic showcases for his carved figures who appear to be living their most pulse-quickening lives, far away from the stuffy sculpture museums that usually form their homes.

Intriguing contrasts abound in Matthew Quick’s whimsical and certainly humorous “Five Minutes To Famous”, making it far headier than most art viewing experiences. He toys with the beholder’s emotions and perception of the secret lives of his three-dimensional stone entities. The greatest irony is that - in the Australian artist’s plane of painterly existence – it seems as though his inanimate stone objects would still be inclined to waste their precious time pursuing the kind of vapid things that humanity’s online culture rewards. Whether we like it or not, Matthew’s artfully outlandish narratives compel us to give our own reflections a good long look in the mirror, and perhaps even conduct a bit of slightly uncomfortable soul-searching in the process.