Return to Sender 1999
National touring exhibition starting at Performance Space
Materials: latex, pine wood, chicken wire, news paper, calico, 32cm television, VHS video player with auto play function, 30 minute digital video, and velcro
Dimensions: 1.8 m by 0.7m
This work was made in response to the theme of the package for a national Australian touring exhibition.
The white elephant can perhaps refer to a reject white elephant stall or the white elephant in the room that no one is talking about.
I collaborated on the animation with Kaho Cheung and sound with Patrick Devlin.
In the cavity in its back was a digital animation featuring flying elephants and reference to a boys own adventure. Admittedly the rationale behind this work is convoluted and confused reflecting my state of mind at the time I made this.
The last exhibition of the touring group show was at Flinders University Gallery.
The staff there offered to keep the elephant sculpture at the gallery in their collection as I lived in Sydney and the freight cost of returning the artwork would have been considerable. However I asked them to send it back to me. Sadly soon afterwards I destroyed the sculpture because I was moving house and didn’t have the funds to keep it in storage. These days I regret that decision and this sculpture could exist in a galleries collection.


