Phoebe Paradise’s sense of place is in lockstep with Brisbane’s newfound sense of confidence that it is, in fact, a city worthy of three-dimensional identity. Fiercely local and running independently as a brand since 2014, Phoebe has stuck loyally to the illustrious 4000 postcode, holding up a sort of mirror to Brisbane’s many faces and iterations: the paradisaical, sure, but also the bad, the dirty, and the ugly.
Growing up in a music and arts circle which un-ironically professed their love of Brisbane by snapping bright blue skies, only to then share them under the passport shredder banner – “a city so good you don’t need a passport!” –, I have grown (understandably) averse to the Brisbanite celebratory spirit. A by-product of Expo 88’s tourism schism, it fails to acknowledge the various dark histories entrenched along the way, from Aboriginal land-grabbing through to military in-fighting, government censorship, and – last but not least – police brutality toward anyone who dared not be a quiet Australian.
In Phoebe’s vast and various imagined worlds, on the other hand, there is never an effort to smooth the terrifying or the turbulent. Quite the contrary: darkness becomes celebratory, a kind of negative bliss – or an inverse manifestation of the aesthetic notion that is the sublime. In Mallrats (2022), Phoebe’s distinctive illustrative style depicts a gig-hopping scene plucked straight from a night out in Fortitude Valley. Drowned in neon lights, a “cast of freaks, punks and weirdos” (1) waits to be stamped into a venue seemingly unaffected by inflation pricing while a sedan drives eerily by. As accomplice voyeurs, our viewpoint shifts alongside the driver’s slow revving. A haunting presence of the uncanny sets in as the neon contorts into varying shades, the street characters getting progressively weirder and more hellish. This demonisation of space is what Foucault calls the agenda of the gothic sublime (2) – but we could just call it Pig City, Bris Vegas, or even the essence of Phoebe Paradise.
Notes
1. “‘Mallrats’ Outer Face Projection Viewing,” Phoebe Paradise event, accessed June 22, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/events/792116728827991/
2. Vijay Mishara, “Theorizing the (Gothic) Sublime,” in The Gothic Sublime (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 25.
Phoebe Sheehy aka Phoebe Paradise is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist, musician and designer based in Meanjin, Brisbane, producing illustrations, textiles, murals and public art installations. In her early career, Phoebe’s graphic lexicon developed quickly via a consistent output of punk flyers and merch for bands around Australia. Soon after, she began experimenting with textile designs, creating capsule collections for Paradise Shop. A boutique, gallery and DIY venue in Fortitude Valley, it was owned and managed by Paradise between 2017–2019, garnering a strong fanbase both locally and internationally. While the brick and mortar shop has ceased since, its online counterpart lives on.
Phoebe’s practice explores the everyday poetics of her hometown’s multiple identities through aesthetics that at once point to its gothic sublimity and sunshine poptimism. Most recently, the artist has been developing work that examines the various incongruous architectures of Brisbane as a mode through which to recount its myriad histories. Notable recent works and exhibitions include the video Subtropical Surreal (2020), acquired by Brisbane City Council’s Public Art Collection; the group exhibition Disintegration (2022), Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville; and the Paddington Terraces Kooka! Trail public art project (2022). Phoebe’s debut solo exhibition Sunburnt in the suburbs is due to launch on November 5, 2022 at Pine Rivers Art Gallery.
Outer Face is the latest iteration of Outer Space’s digital projection public art program, on display every evening between 5:30pm – 11:30pm across the building façade of Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts. On show from 26 April 2022 – onwards.
