With their sly parodies of corporate branding and mass-produced design, Darbyshire’s installations expose the hollow realities behind urban regeneration

What does New Labour’s Britain look like? In the work of Matthew Darbyshire, the outgoing party’s legacy is revealed to be a world of shifting surfaces, all daubed in a CMYK palette – cyan, magenta, yellow and black – the standard commercial colour wheel. In his installations and assemblages, this young British artist brings together fittings and fixtures culled from hospitals, libraries and schools, as well as shopping centres and loft apartments, all bubblegum pinks, swimming-pool turquoises and acid yellows. Curvaceous and soft-edged, their shapes suggest a childish world of playpens and safety first. Our society based on democratic consumer choice turns out to be a dazzling illusion, with no choice at all.

Darbyshire studied under acclaimed sculptor Phyllida Barlow at the Slade School of Art in London, alongside other rising British talents such as Spartacus Chetwynd and Pablo Bronstein. When a serious back injury forced the artist to spend a year in bed, preventing him from making sculpture, he turned his attentions to the realm of contemporary design. Blades House, his installation at London’s Gasworks in 2008, brought his research into focus. This recreation of a revamped former council flat from a nearby block was filled with furnishings apparently catering to the average thirtysomething up-and-comer: everything from an iPod to the bubble chair, Crocs and a Takashi Murakami print. While Darbyshire’s cool-headed “ideal home” display didn’t condemn this kind of aspirational lifestyle, it certainly raised serious social questions. As friendly as it appeared, his take on the blinged-up ex-authority pad revealed a society that remains far from classless.

Recently, Darbyshire has trained his eye on the devil’s pact between government arts investment and social regeneration. Palac, his installation at last year’s Tate Triennial, conflated elements from the Soviet Palace of Culture in Warsaw and the Public, the arts centre in West Bromwich. While the original’s stated purpose is to improve people’s lives through culture, as Darbyshire’s broken-down construction suggested, the reality is often very different. Such schemes, he believes, reduce culture to a mere box-ticking exercise. Meanwhile, the touted “couture cafe-bars” and “interactive facilities” mask a lack of real investment in social infrastructure.

Why we like him: Last summer, Darbyshire’s Funhouse turned the Hayward Gallery Project Space into a dysfunctional, Day-Glo hall of amusements. Its contents, sourced from a round trip around the UK, included a giant bull sculpture made from thousands of fizzy-drink cans, an inflatable office, wonky mirrors, NHS and chain-store graphics, and slide-like shoots. Playing on publicly funded museums’ need for art that increases foot traffic with fairground geegaws, this funhouse was about far more than clowning around.

Country matters: If you wanted to take a road trip around Darbyshire’s Britain, the artist suggests visiting the Public in West Bromwich with its “long-defunct interactive facilities”, Information Commons Library at the University of Sheffield “for its London Underground-style ticket-gated 24-hour access”, and Millennium Point in Birmingham with its “Apple Store-style design”.

Where can I see him? Opening this week at London’s Herald Street gallery, Darbyshire’s latest show offers architectural plans for a mock multi-story development, a Ballardian nightmare that contains everything from a mixed-faith chaplaincy to a gym, luxury apartments to student digs, all concealed beneath a snazzy Perspex facade. Why would you ever leave?

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