Don Driver Elephants for Sale 1986/2010. Govett-Brewster Collection installation view. Photo: Bryan James

Don Driver Elephants for Sale 1986/2010. Govett-Brewster Collection installation view. Photo: Bryan James

Don Driver Elephants for Sale 1986 - 2010
Mixed media installation

As one of New Zealand’s most eclectic modernists, Don Driver’s playful, sometimes provocative assemblages use vibrant imagery to transform everyday objects into talismanic works and installations. His use of diverse, unconventional materials and found objects shows a feeling for the uncanny power of texture and colour.

Driver was fascinated by the elephants and riot of colour he experienced on his 1985 trip to India. Echoing his personal collection of Hindu and Buddhist bronzes and interest in Indian religion, the elephants in this work are gaudily dressed and (mostly) painted blue,  the colour of Ganesh, a Hindu deity with an elephant’s head on a human body. Contrasting with these exotic references, the title of this work comes from posters in a New Plymouth shop advertising large, slow, lumbering computers.

For the 2010 exhibition of Elephants for Sale — the first since its initial showing in 1986 — this important commissioned work in the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s collection was modified by the artist. Driver has added new components to the original installation. He has re-worked driftwood found by his grandchildren into an Indian votive offering, added cloud-like drums and utilised new technologies — a digital recording of Ravi Shankar’s music plays in the background - and  new materials in combination with the orginal to create a magical, re-freshed experience of this work.