Send-Off
November 29, 2023 - January 7, 2024
Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf
Daniel Press uses the copying potential of digital fabrication and lost-wax casting processes to destabilise the tradition of monument-making. Monuments of the British monarchy are embedded within public spaces across the globe. For Send-Off, Press communicated with public art authorities in Australia and beyond to coordinate 3D scans of these effigies. The resultant wax-cast sculptures are ghostly beings: each bearing the residue of inconsistent protocols, technologies, levels of access, and states of deterioration. The exhibition gathers these unstable monuments together, before their dispersal to interstate locations.
Send-Off was co-curated with Pippa Mott. The project was supported by the Woollahra Council Community and Cultural Grants Program and received three Essential Costs of Research grants from UNSW Art & Design. Special events included poetry readings and sculpture workshops.
To read the PhD thesis for this exhibition, [click here].
The exhibition toured to La Perouse Museum (May 4, 2024 - July 28, 2024) with new sculptures, titled Send-Off: La Perouse.
Daniel Press, Phantoms in Perth: Derry, Northern Ireland, 2023. Wax. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Send-Off install shot, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint on wooden transport crates. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Send-Off install shot, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint on wooden transport crates. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Phantoms in Perth: Qonce, South Africa, 2023. Wax. Photography by Pippa Mott.
Daniel Press, Revenants of Queen’s Square series, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint. Edition of 5. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Revenants of Queen’s Square series, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint. Edition of 5. Photography by Richard Trang.
Send-Off visualiser
With a dramatic reading of Ozymandias (1818) by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Filmed by Madeline Press.
Daniel Press, Revenants of Queen’s Square series, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint. Edition of 5. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Phantoms in Perth: Qonce, South Africa and silicone moulds, 2023. Wax. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Phantoms in Perth: Qonce, South Africa, 2023. Wax. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Phantoms in Perth: Qonce, South Africa, 2023. Wax. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Haunted Hobart: Bengaluru, India, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Haunted Hobart: Bengaluru, India detail, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Revenants of Queen’s Square series, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint. Edition of 5. Photography by Richard Trang.
Daniel Press, Revenants of Queen’s Square series, 2023. Wax mixed with oil paint. Edition of 5. Photography by Richard Trang.
“These spectral figurines echo a lineage of replication. Dominating Sydney’s ‘Queen’s Square’ is a monumental bronze statue of Queen Victoria, unveiled in 1879 during the opening of Sydney’s International Exhibition. The sculpture was a copy of Joseph Edgar Boehm’s original, which stands in Windsor, England. Adorned with the orb and sceptre - symbols of supposedly divine authority - her presence signifies the replication and perpetuation of colonial influence across the Commonwealth’s public spaces. In meticulously exploring the act of replication, Daniel Press delves into temporal sequences, transnational histories, and the embedded power structures within public art”.
— Pippa Mott