Daniel Press: Send-Off

Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf, 2023

Daniel Press is a sculptor, curator, and PhD candidate at UNSW Art & Design. In his sculptural practice, 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 Commonwealth realm. 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.