I grew up in the 1960's in a Richmond, British Columbia subdivision called Richmond Gardens, a utopian enclave of cul-de-sacs and crescents. For my family and other first-generation Canadians, the era exuded faith in social progress and excitement about Canada as a nation. The subdivision's continuous winding concrete curbs constrained any last vestiges of our rural pasts' unruly landscape, and the cookie-cutter homes seemed, for a time, to erase our ethnic and economic differences. Eventually, we would learn that difference, of many forms, had not, been overcome, and we would look back at the tidiness of our neighbourhood with disenchantment, but, for the time being, there was optimism.

I recalled the era and its sentiments during a recent photographic expedition to Richmond; I found impeccably manicured, grass-filled, concrete islands dotting new mini-mall parking lots (see photos above). They make one wonder, given the maintenance required, why did they bother? Was the architect banking on the joyful, modernist import these simple, colourful forms would lend to the otherwise-banal mini-mall? Perhaps, but it seems also an indication of our on-going preoccupations, except that now, instead of restraining nature within concrete, these green islands form apologetic environmental gestures within suburbia's insatiable sprawl.

Both for formal and conceptual reasons, I found these grass-filled parking islands forceful subject matter for a series of photo-based paintings. In some of my new works the concrete shapes become almost logos for suburbia, while in others, the grass breaks beyond its boundaries to reclaim its natural space. While a sense of hopefulness prevails, this work signifies sites of transformation between urban and green spaces, between technological and natural processes, and, finally, between promise and disillusion, sites where a modernist import teeters on the edges of the optimism we remember and the disappointment we've forgotten.

Monique Genton