This series of works, collectively titled Looking for Paradise, constitutes a discontinuous satirical narrative about the present and about a possible future. Pictures of the Gold Coast are digitally flooded and combined with an image of the Tampa refugees appropriated from the web. However, it is not really about the ‘Boatpeople’ and not specifically about Surfers’ Paradise. It is more about the habits and tastes of Australians in a hedonistic space they consider paradise but whose environmental sustainability they neglect.

As digitally-produced photographic work that makes reference to contemporary issues of ecological, social, and cultural disaster, my work can be framed in reference to a number of other Australian artists dealing with such themes. For example, Perth artist Kate McMillan bases her multimedia installations on what she calls Disaster Narratives. Rosemary Laing’s digitally manipulated prints include series such as One dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian Landscape. Susan Norrie has shifted in recent years from conventional painting to making moving and still photographic imagery based on events such as the recent Indonesian mudslide (Havoc for the 2007 Venice Biennale) and an ominous dust storm approaching Melbourne (in her 2002 video Undertow). And painter Jon Cattapan translates photographic images of interrogation and police intervention (and other ‘post 9/11’ practices) into ironically beautiful gouaches; while Canberra artist Robert Boynes silkscreens, and physically manipulates, photographed images of displacement and urban alienation to reflect an ennui that has been described as central to our era.

However, my work also draws strongly from historical sources, including the marine photography of Gustav LeGrey, the romantic atmospheric effects of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Lorrain, the multiscreen image juxtaposition of cinema pioneer Abel Gance, the satirical perspectives of Breughel and Hogarth, and the Mannerist tradition of terriblisma — in which apocalyptic awe-inspiring disasters were offered as a moral lesson. Immanuel Kant called such distanced apprehension of objects of terror the sublime, and believed it to invoke the transcendental powers of reason necessary for critical judgement. In the spirit of post-modern scepticism I try to both use the rhetorical power of these grand traditions and to deconstruct it by incorporating humour and identifying absurdity. Key to my strategy is to employ mundane, recognisable, local (Gold Coast) landmarks in the representation of extreme scenarios arising from potentially cataclysmic global issues in order to pose such consequences as a matter of choice.

Technically, I strive for a kind of paradoxical synthesis of Pictorialism, documentary observation, and critical photomontage. My work shares some of the aesthetic of Australian digital artist Stephen Danzig and of the catastrophe montages of Japanese photographer Tsunehisa Kimura. However, I am concerned neither with evoking a dark unconscious nor using high-end technology. I prefer instead to address observable human foibles and to use low-resolution cameras and to employ untidy gestural blending of images rather than seamlessly perfect pixel-by-pixel editing.

Central to the conceptual basis for my digital image-making is the writing of contemporary media theorist Lev Manovich. Manovich argues that the nature of this new medium is to mock the indexical claims of photography by drawing instead from the traditions of painting. Moreover, he claims that, ironically, what can make digital imagery seem ‘unrealistic’ is that it is too accurate, too precise, too resolved. To me, it is important that the image itself, rather than the hi-fidelity of its reproduction, prompts recognition, awe, amusement, aesthetic response, and critical thought. The idea, therefore, is to constantly shift between illusion and its suspension. The index of a mouse smudge or tablet pen slip is more trustworthy than that of the subject represented. And look closely for the limits of pixel degradation as I resize and manipulate various parts of the image— the struggle between order and entropy— isn’t it beautiful? This contentious issue, given the convention of seeking ever greater image sharpness in most mainstream photography, is a strong aspect of the critical reflexivity of my work.