With its unbridled economic prosperity, sprawling relationship with space and strict trading hours, Western Australia finds itself a strange archetype for the consumptive society, and with it the trail of nonplaces consumerism produce as a by-product.

While North America is the birthplace of the gleaming, post-modern, consumerist society, Australia has had American post-modern culture implanted upon it. And although the majority of other westernised countries also suffer from the same Americanisation of their cultures, these societies’ are steeped in heritage and thus more robust. Australian culture, on the other hand, is relatively new and as such far shallower, much more easily diluted by outside influences.

This is why contemporary Australian consumerist culture is the embodiment of the post-modern consumerist society, and why Australia as a nation occupies a unique place in the sphere of postmodern – or postpostmodern – consumerism.

Through documenting the floodlit car parks of large consumerist entities, nine til five describes the isolation, dislocation and melancholy those seeking to define what it is to live in hyper-consumerist societies come across.

Location

HQ Gallery (skate park)
60a Frame Street
Leederville