Gasworks Dec 5th 2017 -Jan 7th 2018

Suburbia has always been my gravitational pull into my art practice. Taking a flight over suburbia for the first time had a enduring impact on myself and the way I created and perceived the landscape, the endless array of patterns and configurations of dwellings and their diverse inhabitants I have created my own unique visual language of suburbia.

Fertile land is a series of paintings I have been working on since the early 90’s that depict aerial views of the sprawling suburbs of Melbourne. My first paintings were made long before the instant access of Google Maps. To create these paintings, I partly visualize and imagine houses and blocks of land belonging to people I know. Having some sound knowledge of house construction mixed with the predictability of suburbia itself, it enables me to invent a familiar yet new visualization of the land and its man made constructs.

Depicted from this elevated view, familiar shapes and colors define our place of dwelling and to me also provoke the “telling” of ideas. For example, the painting called Fertile land (1995) is more than a simple cul-de-sac, the composition suggests the female reproductive system of the fallopian tube and its connected ovaries. Now as we are entering the age of ‘Drones” our visual perspective is changing in exciting and challenging ways. Through these invented landscapes, I aim to capture the impact of contemporary suburbia growing and expanding in our fertile land.