Burbs’ To The Bay

Solo Exhibition at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery

'Burbs to the Bay presents a surreal reimagining of suburbia filled with technicolour streetscapes and twisted architecture. Known for her brightly coloured illustrations, murals and public art installations, Phoebe Paradise’s work examines the iconography of subtropic Queensland and the often-overlooked charm of the mundane.

‘Burbs to the Bay brings together three bodies of work: a newly commissioned mural for the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery foyer, The Hunters (2024), a new presentation of the sculptural installation, Foundation (2023), and the Portrait of a House series (2022).

These works all draw inspiration from iconic Queensland architecture, from grand-yet-dilapidated Queenslanders, to the cheaply built suburban homes of the 80s and 90s. While celebrating everyday streetscapes, a tension between the built environment and the natural environment emerges in these works.

In The Hunters, enormous egrets take back the streets of Hervey Bay as a nonplussed resident watches from his lawn chair. While in Foundation, aging Queenslander-style homes teeter on impossibly high silts, perched on unstable foundations as the world shifts beneath their feet. Originally installed within a pond in Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens shortly after the 2022 floods, here in Hervey Bay the houses emerge from shifting dunes, a nod to the increasing issue of coastal erosion. In the Portrait of a House series, we are left to imagine the stories and inhabitants of an idiosyncratic neighbourhood.

Evoking a fever dream of endless, humid twilight and chirping cicadas, 'Burbs to the Bay creates a sense of both wonder and unease.