Underwear

2015 - 2019
Recycled wood from pallets & steel

Winner, Sirromet Outdoor Sculpture Prize, 2019

Installed at Sirromet Winery,

Mt Cotton.
September - October, 2019.

Reworked and re-exhibited anew at Sculputure Queensland's
Brisbane Sculpture Festival, 2019

Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.

Originally Installed at
Sculpture on the Edge, 2015

Spicer's Retreat, Maleny.

Our Blokes "couldn’t build a canoe...”

The work encompasses issues of social justice as well as political commentary, responding to an obligation in ‘keeping the bastards honest’. The comment concerns the new submarine contract and the comments made by then Defense Minister David Johnston, in the Abbot Government, in declaring that the shipwrights 'couldn’t build a canoe’. His words rocked the boat so much as to cost him his job.

The work “Underwear” is a play on words, referring to how the sub operates, as well as to what is meant to be worn inside ones’ outer attire. It reveals this embarrassment which, when viewed by the world, must be seen as 'hanging out the laundry for all to see'. The craftsmanship and detail of a stripped canoe combined with areoplane wings are symbolic/ironic toward the pending decision for our government to award the $20 billion contract for the building of the submarines to either South Australia or Japan.

Recent works employ the use of recycled timber and challenge the notion of what some may consider waste or discarded materials, giving them new life and meaning. The skill level required in using substandard materials becomes a juggle as this challenges the process of construction. This material is metaphorical for the fragility of the common man dispossessed.