Keep Out - Statement
Melbourne is a living organism. It follows its own pulse, driven by the circuitry of profit and policy. The dreams and hopes that surge through its veins insist on constant growth that alienates, disconnects, silences. I felt misplaced in what many might call this urban evolution, and needed to know why, so I traveled to the city’s very edge, where the organism’s new skin is still tender: the outer suburbs.
The fringe of Melbourne is a frontier where bushland meets asphalt, every patch already staked and fenced. Profit and migration attract hungry corporate developers who stamp cookie-cutter lots into so-called master-planned communities. They brand them with distinctive names like Grand Central, Aspiré, Peppercorn Hill, yet each estate ends up identical to the others. To sell the dream, marketers drape the empty blocks in banners promising a new school, a town centre, “A Better Future”.
The new suburbs feel staged and vacant. Fresh asphalt loops past empty lots and artificial lakes, and rows of fences stand paranoid in their defensive repetition. Every breakthrough leaves trash in what not so long ago was pristine wilderness, trash that becomes the suburb’s shadow, revealing the people who inhabit the dream. Nothing hides it. The evidence is everywhere.
The landscape alienates. A rigid grid of pine-framed boxes holds residents in separate cells – no one appears in the streets. Individualism masquerades as self-sufficiency, yet life here relies on car engines and glowing screens. The real sense of community has nowhere to root.
After spending time in the suburbs, I can't help but be amazed by this grandiose display of civilization’s perseverance through copy and repetition. This ability to summon hundreds of identical homes as if it is trying to outlast nature itself. The longer one lingers here, the more seductive the logic becomes, the more likely one is to adapt. The symmetry becomes attractive; repetitive facades reveal a new kind of beauty. Its geometric language is simple and universal.
Traveling through these regions, I found the mind-numbing sameness of the landscape creates a dreamlike state where the houses began to speak to me.
Each one told a desperate story. I wanted to ask them, what kind of future will you bring?