2005

Pete Johnson examines the built environment in a way that reflects the relationship between visual culture, consumption and rhetoric. The images represent a consistent exploration of the suburbs around Brisbane with a particular fascination for the ceaseless outer suburban development that is concomitant with the current high rate of growth in south-east Queensland.

In the process of his engagement with the urban landscape he observes the nuances, the transient, the static, the ubiquitous and the ironic. He is bombarded with billboards, signs, trucks, cars, attractions, directions and instructions. He notices both architecture, and the architecture of the nondescript. There is banality, repetition, uniqueness, comfort and disquiet. He documents these aspects of the urban landscape so as to reify a perception that acknowledges the omnipresence of the built environment in the development of the suburban condition.