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These assemblage wall-sculptures are in two distinct series: Sly Owl and TV Times.

Artist Statement:
My practice with sculptural assemblage as a medium began during an expedition to Arnhemland in 1983 with Tim Storrier and Frank Hodgkinson. This was a part of the Artists in the Field programme, organised by the director of Museums and Art Galleries (MAGNT) of the Northern Territory, Colin Jack Hinton. We flew by helicopter to a Water Board hut at Magela Creek and stayed for a week. In 2026 MAGNT is acquiring by donation the complete assemblages, drawings and photographs which were made during this visit to add to their existing collection of my work.

In the early 1980s I was living in North Bondi with my then partner Mazie Turner and our young son Kai. On the streets nearby there were suddenly lots of abandoned television sets from the black-and-white days, thrown out because affordable colour sets had arrived. Some of the old TVs were wood-framed like furniture, and some were screwed-together as plastic boxes. It wasn’t easy removing the picture frames when behind the front glass of each set was the big glass balloon of a cathode ray tube which could explode if carelessly handled.

It would be a decade and a half before I’d first use these frames in making assemblage sculptures, in 1998, when five of them went to New York for a solo exhibition Versions: Subversions, Perversions and Verse at Ubu Gallery. That show was favourably reviewed in the New York Times, but only one of the assemblages sold and four returned home to my then home at Wangi Wangi at Lake Macquarie. These four are included in the series of fourteen television-screen sculptures titled TV Times. In 2023 I returned to making assemblages, with valuable construction help from my studio assistant as the time, Stephen Hobbs, in making the series Sly Owl. Since then I have continued my interest in this medium, while continuing to work with sign language as a predominant practice.

Sly Owl:

Saw Tooth                    $ 4, 400
perspex sign ‘Dental Surgeon’, three MDF letters painted red, broom head with thick orange bristles on a wood base, plastic saw handle with toothbrush, small solid LED strip
80 x 42 x 14cm
2023

Sly Owl                    $ 5, 500
Reflective tape on plywood; pieces of rusted steel wire from excursions in the
countryside across decades; all attached to canvas on a stretcher in a wooden frame
with painted edge.
Four constructions made of small reflective scraps were made in 1998 in a homage to
Rosalie Gascoigne (whom I’d met at her house in Canberra, introduced by Peter
Townsend the editor of Art Monthly in London whom I’d spent time with while living
there in 1985-86). Note that Rosalie never used cut circles, nor did she turn ‘slowly’ into
‘sly owl’ though she could be affectionately named as just that.
105 x 105 x 5.5cm
1998/2023

Beach Days   (diptych)                    $ 7, 700
1. Squashed and abandoned Coke cans, collected from public places over the years. Attached to a board with reflective tape, wooden frame.
167 x 64 x 7cm
Constructed in 2012/2022
2. Coca-cola advertising display, corflute, with wooden struts on reverse. Red reflective tape over the ‘e’ of ‘Coke’
164 x 51 x 3cm

East Berlin, 1984                    $ 3, 600
Vintage wood frame; burnt list of hymns from a church; wooden Pinocchio figure with
lifting leg and arm (one each, no foot); the latter two objects found among casual street
ruins in East Berlin in 1984.
46 x 41 x 5cm
1984/2023

Into The Music (Swing Swing)                    $ 3, 600
Wooden soft drink crates (for Swing, YY and shapes), three large wood bobbins.
92 x 42 x 13cm
1998/2023

Spee-dee War                    $ 4, 400
B1 jet model, embossed metal Spee-dee checkout sign (from Grand Rapids, Michigan), perspex crucifix, plywood painter’s palette, reflective tape as background in a frame with LED lighting on the edges.
85 x 85 x 4.5cm
2023

Mobile Aphrodisiac                    $ 700
Rubber lobster with 1996 mobile telephone. Numbered and signed inside the phone.
Edition of 21
40 x 25 x 15cm
1997

Cartoon Afterlife Of The American Dream (Suss Meme Home Slum)           $ 6, 200
Warner Brothers and Disney toy characters, bought for my two youngest children in the
mid 1990s when they already felt ‘vintage’ so maybe 1970s?, brass letters, Laminex
sheet background in a fine wood frame by Dino Consalvo.
Made at Steel River Studio, Newcastle, with Stephen Hobbs as studio assistant.
134 x 96 x 15cm
2023

Emergency Call                    $ 8, 800
Carved coconuts, origin unknown, from the South Pacific presumably, antique handset
from an American telephone (the phone body was used for a Drillaphone sold at Ubu
Gallery, NYC, in 1998-99), with figure shapes made for pressing into biscuit dough, all
mounted on a reflective sign on plywood, with a deep wood frame.
Please note that Emergency Call is being entered in the Sulman Prize 2026 and any sale will be finalised only after this event is completed.
98 x 67 x 14cm
2026

Lifetime Guarantee                     $ 3, 300
Pressed metal signs (forty five) with Milanese skull and momento mori.
Originally released signs in an edition of 300, framed in a metal triangle.
94 x 102 x 5cm
2003/2023

Rover Oh, Oh Rover                    $ 2, 600
Rover 90 car grill (1955) with two brass letters
42 x 62 x 5cm
2023

TV Times:

Storyline Mission Life                     $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, carved wood snake from Central Australia (1980’s), cord, Contralto, Imperial Edition music book with lyrics in English and German, ‘Storyline’ metal label, music stand.
Note: Storyline Mission Life comes from a visit to Papunya in the Northern Territory in 1981.
The snake was bought in Alice Springs, and the snake with music stand was te complete work in that television frame in 1998. In 2023 I added the book of music with lyrics in both German and English.
48 x 63 x 13cm
1998/2023

Tinikling Dance With Monster                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, wooden figures from the Philippines, perspex crucifix, toy monster figurine
52.5 x 80 x 6cm
2023

Boy And The Moon                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, reflective tape background, two sides of a roadwork warning lamp.
After Sidney Nolan’s painting Boy And The Moon.
49.5 x 64 x 7cm
2023

Just Married                     $ 2, 200
Television frame, slippery surface warning road-sign, old horseshoe
46.5 x 58 x 6cm
2023

Self-Portrait In Profile With Marcel Duchamp                    $ 8 ,800
Thick wood plank cut with a scroll saw, felt, wooden box with lid.
Please note that Self-Portrait is being entered in the Wynne Prize 2026 and any sale will be finalised only after this event is completed.
35 x 42.5 x 15.5cm
1998/2026

Wrapped Christ With Holy Ghost                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, wooden crucifix, wrapping material, metal peg and rope: remnants from Christo & Jean Claude’s Little Bay wrap in 1969, recovered from site in 1983
44.5 x 51 x 7cm
1998

Santa Blessing The Shark Eggs                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, wooden Santa bought in Germany, Port Jackson shark eggs from Shoalhaven, New South Wales
44.5 x 55 x 9cm
2023

Beautiful Belle (NY/LA, Lewitt/Ruscha)                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, aluminium frame with stainless steel wires, five metal letters from ‘Bellevue’ house name.
50 x 63 x 4cm
1998
This work plays with the iconography of Ed Ruscha, whom I’d spent an afternoon with at his studio in Las Angeles in 1994, making a video interview about his artist books and the grid-lines of Sol Lewitt.

Hunters Hunting                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, insignia from a Hillman Hunter car 1966-1979, six early mobile phones
46.5 x 58.5 x 6.5cm
2023

Satellite Madness                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, masonite scrap, painted wooden parrot, carved wood duck cameo, bakelite switch, badge ‘Satellite Madness’ issued by the Media Workers Council,London
48 x 71 x 8cm
2023

From A To B And Back Again                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, oil paint on canvas (unknown New York artist, found in the street), embroidered Skylab patch, plastic dragon figure, plastic man-fish pouring water.
50 x 64 x 8cm
1998
Note: From A To B And Back Again (which is the title of a book I enjoyed by Andy Warhol) comes from a visit to New York in 1985 visiting and staying with photographer Ian De Gruchy in the Lower East Side which at the time felt like a war zone. Ian walked me around the neighbourhood calling out my name so I wouldn’t get mugged. The painting was a streetside find and the other items market-stall souvenirs.

Bow And Arrow                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, aluminium mesh, ten wooden bobbins (or what?), Chewbacca figure from Star Wars (1980’s), metal arrowhead on broken arrow, end of broken violin bow
49.5 x 64 x 8cm
2023

Last Gasp (Speedy 2 Mickey)                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, copper number 2, Last Gasp rat trap, Speedy Gonzalez and Mickey Mouse figures (both with cloth outfits)
47 x 58 x 10cm
2023

South Pacific                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, carved wood boat, large abelone shell, three hand-made metal fishing spearheads, metal and glass lens (made in Austria)
47.5 x 70 x 7cm
2023

Rhapsody In Red                    $ 2, 200
Television frame, laminex background, squashed saucepan from the Lower East Side, New York 1985, aluminium machinery casting, metal watering can rose
43 x 59 x 7cm
2023

Berlin Fishing with Jan M. Petersen                     $ 3, 000
Internal guitar back with painted elements by Jan M. Petersen in 2003, fragment of a
wall poster, cigarette lighter from a visit in the 1980s with ‘Berlin’ logo including bear,
handset of an Australian telephone from the 1960s/1970s
47 x 36 x 11cm
2003/2023