Ian Strange: Suburban

Overview

In 2011, Ian Strange recreated a full-scale replica of his family home as part of an installation in Turbine Hall at Cockatoo Island, accompanied by a film featuring the powerful destruction of three Holden Commodores. In his new body of work, Suburban, Strange films and photographs (amongst other things) violently burning a house in the suburbs to the ground. Whether or not this is a particularly creative way to work out some childhood angst, we should be grateful that Strange has art as an outlet.

Initially gaining recognition in Australia’s early street-art scene from the late 1990s under the moniker Kid-Zoom, Strange is one of the few who have successfully transitioned from the canvas of the streets to internationally recognised contemporary exhibitions. In a body of visually stunning and emotionally compelling photography and film work, the Australian-born, New York-based artist explores the notion of the family home as an icon of Western post-war idealism in the United States and Australia.

Travelling across Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, New Jersey, New York and New Hampshire with a film crew and volunteers for two and a half years, he has produced a recreation of eight site-specific interventions incorporating suburban homes. Surrounding you with three screens in a pitch-black room, the video installation work is particularly arresting and immersive and feels as monumental as a moving cinematic experience.

Shots of eerily lit house facades branded by a red X or a large circle as though by alien intervention combined with an equally ominous soundtrack challenges the association of warmth and comfort in a home, and paints a distinct wash of unease over the energy of these otherwise cookie-cutter moulds. As the music builds, so too does the imagery, climaxing in wide-scale shots of homes being burnt to the ground, sitting in a unclear emotional place somewhere between devastating and mesmerising.

This was in fact the tone of the entire exhibition, imparting upon the viewer the confusing fusion of an iconic symbol of comfort with a mysterious, dark energy.