Though Australian artist Ian Strange made a name for himself by subverting the 'burbs, deconstructing suburban homes and turning them into giant canvases, his most recently work involves exporting them, dropping a single-family home on the forecourt of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Or rather, recreating the exterior of one for Landed, a site-specific sculpture built for the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, and gathering gravel around it to give it the appearance of just having fallen, Wizard of Oz-stye, from the sky. The house itself is an all-black recreation of the exterior of Strange's childhood home in Perth—similar to what others have attempted on a smaller scale with Lego as their medium—a more personal example of his interest in shaking up the trappings of suburban life.
Given Strange's ongoing focus on this kind of architecture, it can't be lost on him that the home is in front of a neoclassical museum, and surrounded, as the Biennal's description puts it, by "Victorian buildings crafted in sandstone." The juxtaposition is pretty surreal. Strange also has other work up in the show, which the catalogue author describes as "episodes of Neighbours directed by David Lynch and scripted by Stephen King with advice from Sigmund Freud." Could this be what happens to all-black homes that lose design deathmatches?
· Ian Strange drops a suburban house from the sky for Landed [Design Boom]
· All Artistry posts [Curbed National]