Small Monolithic Statue

 

Detail and obverse

Bike seat frame being varnished

The round bits came from here.

Used some bolts and Nyloc nuts from the Eames chair to fix the seat on this bike.

Things are a bit unstable in the world right now we have a former ally with a president who is running rampant seeking regime change in countries other than his own which is a bit upsetting. Now it's not only news that is filtering in from around the world. It is affecting most Australians materially, with petrol prices rising and fuel supplies generally less certain. In the context of all these regime changes, images of toppling sculptures of world leaders have been running through my head. My junk sculpture practice has sort of drifted towards making my own grand - mock world leader sculpture. Yes it is only about 60 centimetres high however placed in the right spot and with a bit of squinting it possibly looks bigger.

The main bits of these sculpture are at the top and they are adapters for fitting disc brakes on bicycles. I ordered them from eBay and they look quite good but I'm not quite ready to try them out yet. They are held together by a used-up lip balm dispenser. The shaft of the plane is from a dead Eames inspired chair found on a junk heap. In the last few days I have harvested bolts and nuts from this chair to fix a bicycle. The base is made from a box of leftover routed timber bicycle frame components which I have been rummaging through and rescuing. Finally I was varnishing and repairing timber bicycle seats and using builders bog and varnish - with these I finished off the plinth.

So there's a lot going on in the world - not all of it nice and sometimes not a lot we can do about it. But at least in Australia we can reduce dependency on foreign energy - maybe ride a bike a bit more, maybe put up a solar panel or two, and maybe support more onshore processing and use of Australian crude oil and gas. But in the short term and as an immediate reaction there is always art.