Artist Statement

Parke’s first foray into colour photography following his success with black and white projects such as Minutes to Midnight and Dream/Life and Beyond. Parke explains
‘“When photographing in black and white, I always attempted to deal with the emotion of the time I lived in and in particular within my home country, Australia. Now that I have made the move to colour I have found that I really want to put together a body of work that looks at the physicality of contemporary Australia. This is the start of a big project that will concentrate mainly on the exploration of urban Australia with an emphasis on all the major cities. Everything is BIG. Big streets, big skies, big signs, big light, big country. Each city is quite unique in its characteristics....I am trying to create images that are so perfect that they almost look staged, like a slick advertising image. In a sense everything nowadays is for sale. I am trying to blur the boundaries between the real world and the fabricated one...The work looks at a variety of issues including Australia’s rapidly changing coastline. The modern world is a consumer’s world, everywhere we look, just in case we forgot, we are reminded to buy, buy, buy.”