Stella Brennan: Archaeologist of Suburbia

Stella Brennan's early works began from the birth pangs of the Internet age and the messianic phase of neo-liberalism. They mark the decade when the world changed. By 1990 New Zealand, Japan and Australia had joined the magical mystical tour named the Internet, and packets of data were flying through deep underground cables and across starlit southern skies. A Labour government was well along the path of a neoliberal reformation of the country's economic and social policies. The market had won out over equality and solidarity, and we were immersed in a new language of "return on investment," "choice," and "deregulation." The global concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere reached 350 parts per million by volume. Walls and stocks had fallen, the Exxon Valdez ran aground, and the earth became a little warmer.