I have been writing a bit about the relationship between suburbia and the city. Since junk for code is becoming a more visually-orientated site I thought that I might upload some images of suburbia produced from someone living on the antipodean edge of the art world.

Here is a neon image of the exterior of Australian suburbia.

It is by Howard Arkley. Some information about the person as distinct from the painter is this text by the Melbourne writer Edwina Preston.

This Arkley's image of the suburban interior.

Suburbia is about house and garden, which is what makes it so different to innercity living.

It is a different image of suburbia to that of the 1950s painted by John Bracks. In this representation, suburbia was an existential wasteland peopled by emotionally impoverished people living a life of soul-destroying conformity.

That one was prior to television and the endless flow of images from elsewhere in the world that would eventually work its way into our dreams and thoughts and so shape our desires. It was a world prior to pop.

However, Arkley's suburbia is not John Howard's white picket fence suburbia. This is Australia of the 1980s and so we have this ritual amongst the suburban boys:

It is a world corroded by the effects of heroin addiction.

However, I know little about the contemporary art world over the past three decades in which Howard Arkley worked. This review of Eddwin'a Preston's biography by the art critic John MacDonald gives us sardonic insight into the Melbourne art world that was theorized by the Art and Text crowd.

A more positive account is given by McKenzie Wark Television and pop gave birth to a new Australian aesthetic sensibility.