Visualising Homes in Crisis: Interview with Multidisciplinary Artist, Phoebe Paradise

In early January 2025, I had the privilege of sitting down with multidisciplinary artist, Phoebe Paradise, to discuss flooding, growing up in Brisbane, and how homes in crisis have become a motif for intergenerational dialogue. This interview took place on a hot summer morning at her studio on Merivale Street in South Brisbane, Meanjin.

Who are you? (Tell us about yourself)

My name is Phoebe Sheehy, my pseudonym is Phoebe Paradise, that’s how most people know me. I am a visual artist, musician, designer. I guess that multidisciplinary artist is kind of the over-arching term. I like to think that I’m kind of good at lots of things, master of none! I do lots of different work in the creative arts and most recently, I have become the Director of Merivale Studios, an art studio that is home to 16 different visual artists and creative businesses in Brisbane; it’s a real gas. I have a very fun job!

How did your interest in homes in crisis (flood, disrepair etc.) as a subject for begin?

I was definitely inspired from a young age, I was living with my nan, mum, dad, and brother in a multigenerational household. We lived in that house until I was five (I think!) and it was filled with the remnant memories of a large flood that happened in 1990. My nan had lost everything then, all of the photos, all of the furniture, this was her home that she owned (we were renting from her I think). Every time that it would rain there would be this sort of threat of the flood returning, and it would always flood in some small way. It felt like this flood was a bad housemate that could come back at any time and tear up the place. I found it very fascinating as a kid, kind of scary but also really exciting. You know when you’re a kid and there is a storm at school and everyone is just running around and really excited about it, it creates this kind of excitement and mythology around natural disasters. In the 90s we had a fascination with natural disasters, movies about tornados or big floods, tsunamis, or volcanic eruptions… we have this obsession with the natural disaster as entertainment, when the reality of it is much more boring, slow-moving and shitty, with terrible long term effects.

Trying to find the midpoint of the aesthetics of these natural disasters in a much more mundane and very local way is something that really fascinates me. When I first started working in illustration and creating work about these homes in crisis, that really came from the 2021-2022 floods when a lot of people in my life lost their houses. A bunch of us were living in suburban proximity to one another in Windsor, and my friend lost his sharehouse to the flood... It happened so quickly,, and they couldn’t get in touch with the owner because he owned so many other investment properties, didn’t even live in Brisbane, (theirs being just one of god knows how many) he was completely unreachable during this crisis They got rescued by the SES, literally taken out on a boat from the second story of the house, they came and stayed on our couch in this tiny little unit for a couple of days. It was this tragic comedy, almost, how the climate crisis and the housing crisis hit each other in this massive collision, at the perfect time. It was the middle of Covid, a natural disaster, and the middle of the peak of housing inequality; it was fertile ground to respond with some interesting, hyperlocal visual art and illustrations that depict something that was reaching everybody. It felt apocalyptic, or like a bad science fiction.

What is your current domestic environment i.e. where do you currently live? With whom?

I am incredibly fortunate; I have spent my nearly entire life living in a different house about a year at a time. Even as a kid, we lived in rental apartments, and then when I was thirteen years old, my parents finally bought a home and then immediately got divorced and as a result I spent all of high school living a week between each house Most recently (and this is a huge deal for us) we started renting a place off my dad in South Brisbane, no longer beholden to real estate agents and property managers. It is the greatest thing on earth, and I feel so lucky to have that help, and finally have that stability. A few years ago, I would have been too embarrassed to tell anyone that, but now everyone that I know is like "Good, this is a good thing, you made it out! Enjoy it”

We have this amazing little studio unit. His tenant moved out just as our rent was about to go up at our old place in Windsor. When we first rented that one, we got it for $380 (I think!) in 2021, and by the time we were leaving it was going up to $650. I thought that sucked, there is no way out of that. But here we are. We moved into our new apartment in April and it’s a three-minute walk away from Merivale Studios.

I spent my entire life as a Northside purist. I thought everyone on the South Side thought that they were soooo great, and then I moved down here, and I was like “ohhhhh I get it, I finally get it”, it’s nice, shady and walkable, and pretty. It’s me and my fiancé, and my dad lives in the same building so he’s in the mix too. Returning to the multi-generational household in a way haha.

What does domesticity (or the notion of home) in uncertain times mean to you? How do you define it (for yourself and others)?

I think for our generation (Millennials and Gen Z), domesticity has always felt like a bit of a performance, it’s like you are ‘performing stability’ in a way that previous generations, like Gen X and Boomers didn’t. Gen X media/films in the 90s and early 2000s depicted going to Ikea, having a wife and kids and a house as the worst possible death sentence of modern life. The idea of having a job, of getting paid just to live a consumerist life and eventually retire, in Gen X’s mind was hell. It’s so incredible that for Millennials and Gen Z, and I assume Gen Alpha’s to follow, that all any of us want is a boring life in some sense. Imagine having access to a level of stability where you can afford to resent the things that make a normal, boring life. Even the idea of being able to buy a new couch feels indulgent now, and so this idea of domesticity, when we do our little dinner parties, and we do our aesthetic spring cleans for IG reels on the weekends, and meal preps and all of that, It feels like a level of performance that doesn’t come naturally, it feels like more a performance then just a day to day thing. But that’s also one woman’s opinion - I am painting strokes with the worlds’ broadest brush here haha!

I recently had a really great conversation with Jonathan McBurnie about this in the lead up to my solo show at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery. He is more in the Gen X category, and I’m more in the millennial category, and we were laughing about this idea. He is a very smart and thoughtful visual artist, who is also a fantastic writer. He wrote a review for my show, and put into words this idea: people describe my work as very nostalgic, which is a term that comes up a lot, and whilst I don’t necessarily disagree with it, it might be the wrong word.We talk about how nostalgia isn’t patriotism, it’s not “ahh yes, wasn’t it great in the good old days where everyone owns a house and gender roles were clear, and all of that kind of stuff”, none of that. Rather, I think it is nostalgic for the availability of choice in life, of not living on a noticeably dying planet, that was afforded to previous generations. It’s sort of looking at something as banal as a suburban house, through glittery, rose-coloured lenses - as he says in the review “a heritage-coloured dream no longer available, banished alongside steady employment and affordable housing”.

What themes do you see in your representation of domesticity (or home)?

My representation of domesticity is very voyeuristic, the house is always presented from the exterior, you never really get to see the inside of it. My representations of the home are usually about the exterior, the perfect or imperfect subtropical gardens, little details or renovations that have made these homes unique. It makes me think about my nan who would spend her entire life making her garden as lush as possible, with zero room for humans to actually walk through; completely filled with native flowers and trees. The voyeurism is really a big part, these houses are something that we can see from a far but aren’t really allowed inside of. I don’t think of domesticity explicitly when I am creating my work, but I think that when you are talking about the home, you can’t untether these things either, it’s a part of the story.

How do your works represent and / or depict the intersections of climate vulnerability, domesticity, and gender?

This is a tough one, but I think if we agree the domestic burdens of modern life tend to fall on women' s shoulders, then the small daily guilts of climate change tends to fall on women’s shoulders too. If we use the small, kind of crappy example of just cleaning, or cooking, there can be a guilty indulgence in buying the non-environmentally friendly cleaning products, or the indulgence of purchasing food and it going to waste. It can be a sense of constant wastefulness in the house. If you’re not “green enough”, this sort of guilt falls on our shoulders a lot. However, on the flip side we have the guilt of consumerism too, the guilt of “maybe I don’t have enough STUFF”, or “I do have enough, so maybe I have too much”. It’s a little bit of a trap. For example, I bought this water cooler {points} for the Merivale Studios, and it cost me $110 on Black Friday. I’m not a big shopper and I don’t spend that much money online. I don’t know why but I was obsessed with the idea of not having to wait to boil my water to have my coffee (it has the hot water; it has the cold water). There was a long process of rationalisation that I put myself through to make this incredibly cheap purchase for 16 other people. It’s not even for myself; it’s not even in my house. The guilt and rationalisation that I put myself through for this incredibly mediocre water cooler, I don’t think that is a unique experience, but I do think that it can be a gendered experience.

*‘The Big Rot’ by Phoebe Paradise (2023)*

I tend to think about things more in terms of class than in terms of gender, but these things can’t be separated from one another. You’re torturing yourself, going am I putting myself through this because of the way that I was brought up, or because I’m a woman, am I overconsuming?

Additionally… I think that we are currently seeing acts of performative domesticity as an aesthetic choice which is really interesting to me. All the trad wife stuff that’s come up in the last few years that shows women returning to ‘traditional’ gender roles in the most aesthetically pleasing way is being twisted back around as this brave, feminist choice, which I have a lot of feelings about as well. There’s so much of this burden that still sits on women’s shoulders, and the guilt of it, whether you take part in it or not, is just going to be there. The guilt is what brings us all together, no matter where you sit.

What do you think the future of ‘home’ will look like in the context of the climate crisis in Brisbane?

I’m not sure, I think growing up I always saw the house as the “everything place” - especially in Brisbane where historically you could get away with a big, multi-room home with a huge backyard. You could entertain there, it was where you would have your social life, you would cook there, you would do your washing, have a dedicated office space, a ‘hobby room’ hahaha. This would be the place where you could grow a family, you could have a pet, everything would happen in this one place.

From my experience, it seems every time I move house, it gets smaller and smaller but more and more expensive. I found that now I am living most of my life outside, and the home is really just where I eat and go to sleep, it is no longer the spot where my social life happens. My workplace is here at the studio, I go out as much as possible. A lot of the people that I know that are renting, or in unstable, precarious housing situations, their life is spent outside. Even the kitchens can’t really accommodate them to cook all the time, so they will eat out more. I think that the social life, generally, has been transplanted from the home into these third spaces - somewhere between home and work.

Can you tell me about your latest or next project/s?

We are hosting our very first group show here at Merivale studios, which is very exciting. We are doing a showcase of all the artists in residence. The exhibition launches on the 6th of February, from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM and features work from some of the coolest Brisbane-based artists around, dabbling in everything from illustration to street art, photography, painting and more!

This year I am going to try and work a little bit less, which is going to be awesome, I can’t wait. I hit the road a little too hard in 2024 I think, and I am going to try and use those third spaces that we were talking about to be with my loved ones and see them a little bit more.

Have you got anything else that you would like to add?

I want to add that truly one of the great joys of seeing people interact with my work is how uniquely they react to the idea/image of the home as a motif. When I had my solo exhibition up in Hervey Bay, we had a bunch of older folks come through and they had these really emotional experiences with Foundation (sculpture installation), and seeing themselves reflected in the work, saying things like “this reminds me of my dad’s house that was built in 1920, I wish I could see it again”, and sharing these vivid and personal memories and experiences of family and loss. One of the great joys of my work is how these completely different people from different demographics and experiences can still enjoy the work but approach it from a completely different angle. Someone my age will say “ah yes, this is about the housing crisis, obviously”, or “this is about the precarity of living in the modern world, obviously”, but someone else might say “this is someone who just really loves these houses and appreciates the architecture”. Both things are true, and I think that one of the joys of being an artist is that you get to navigate these extremely political and personal issues in a way that helps people work out and work through their own experiences of this crazy world that we are living in and see themselves reflected in it.

You can view more of Phoebe’s work here.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

climate

INTERIOR DESIGN