‘Ian Strange: Suburban Interventions 2008-2020’: Reviews

ArtsHub “Ian Strange – Suburban Interventions, John Curtin Gallery (WA”) by Gina Fairley
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5 star review

“The exhibition Ian Strange: Suburban Interventions 2008 – 2020 is an example of getting it right. Curated by Chris Malcolm, director at John Curtin Gallery, this is surprisingly the first survey exhibition of Ian Strange’s work, and it is fitting to coincide with Perth Festival, which under its new branding celebrates local creative heroes. Perth-born and New York-based, Strange is known for representing the familiar. In his hands, the idea of home – which is ingrained with all kinds of notions of identity and security – is turned inside out, made raw.”

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Sydney Morning Herald ”Perth Festival 2020: The Art” by John McDonald
First published 22 February, 2020

“The next outstanding festival exhibition is Ian Strange’s Suburban Interventions 2008-2020 at the John Curtin Gallery. Strange is a local-boy-made-good who has become an artist of international stature with an epic series of works in which he has painted and photographed abandoned houses. It’s an apocalyptic public art that forces reflections on themes such as dispossession, homelessness, natural disasters, economic crises and the rapid fading of the suburban dream.

Not only does Strange photograph these houses, he restores and repairs them, and lights each image in the manner of a motion picture shoot. He has worked in Perth, in New Zealand, the United States and even Poland. There is nothing tricked-up about his photographs and videos which faithfully record his elaborate paint jobs that spread crosses, skulls and words such as RUN and HELP across the facades of houses.

Some of Strange’s most stark and disturbing images come from buildings covered in saturating tones of black or red. By painting a suburban bungalow a dense, sooty black he shrinks the structure into a block as heavily compacted as a lump of coal.”

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