FOUNDATION
Botanica: Contemporary Art Outside is a nighttime, public art installation placement at the Brisbane City Botanical Gardens. Botanica 2023 (held for 2 weeks in May) saw ten large-scale installations, ranging from sculpture and projections through to augmented reality and interactive creations that transformed the gardens into an outdoor gallery.
FOUNDATION, by Phoebe Paradise, is an Australian Gothic tableau vivant, staged with the usual suspects of suburban Brisbane architecture. These sculptures are protracted into otherworldly structures, towering over the swampland below.
Brisbane’s iconic and unique suburban architecture has always been strategically designed to match and adapt to our climate. Long hallways, Breezeblocks, homes elevated by stilts with a concrete cavity underneath to promote airflow and avoid flood damage; it’s undeniable that Brisbane’s homes and people have been shaped by their surroundings. Our sometimes volatile relationship with the local environment is tattooed into the very fibre of our suburbs through its design.
FOUNDATION presents a cinematic miniature world wherein this existing design relationship is pushed to an extraordinary, fantastical, and somewhat unsettling speculative future. Workers' cottages and Queenslanders have been elevated onto stilts that defy engineering possibility. Extreme weather events have been rendered mundane by their frequency, as seen by the lights flickering from warmly lit living rooms. Television hums inside, homes connected by crudely-assembled power lines and clotheslines while crises lap ominously below.
https://www.lemonadeletters.com.au/reviews/botanica
https://7weekender.com/13076-2/
Documentation by Joey Bailey
Fabrication with Remo Vallance Design
