Stuart McLachlan

Ascension

Name: Ascension
Brand: Flinders Lane Gallery
Price: 28000.00 AUD
Availability: InStock

$28,000 AUD

~~AUD~~ $28,000 AUD

2026 – Original

Arches watercolour rag paper, card, wood, metal rod, varnish, acrylic paint, sandstone and glue.

184cm x 85cm x 40cm

In artist's studio

An F-4 Phantom, hand-cut in paper, balanced nose-down on a block of sandstone. Two gladiolus stems rise from the twin exhausts. Swallows are cut clean through both wings and left standing proud of the surface. The plane dissolves into a murmuration.

Gladiolus comes from the Latin gladius: sword. The Greeks called it xiphium, from xiphos, also sword. Romans threw them to victorious gladiators and grew them as a symbol of strength, in part because the plant takes hold in ground where little else will. In purple they stand for nobility, grace and moral integrity.

Artist statement: Ascension reflects on the continuation of the natural world.
Objects like jets, built for war at a cost of millions each, eventually end up in aircraft graveyards in the middle of deserts. Used worldwide by many countries, they are weapons of expansion and destruction. In time these prized objects become obsolete. This is when nature, as it always does, reclaims them, turning their husks into sanctuaries for the living, rising out of a use no longer required.

Additional paper flowers $2000.

About the Artist

Learn more about Stuart McLachlan

Stuart McLachlan is an internationally acclaimed artist whose intricate sculptures crafted from paper, stone, and mixed media offer incisive critiques of humanity’s environmental impact. His practice interrogates themes of displacement, survival, and the fragile balance between progress and destruction. Through delicate yet conceptually bold constructions, McLachlan challenges the viewer to confront the consequences of climate change, unsustainable development, and the ever-growing environmental toll of human industry.

Artworks currently on exhibition will be shipped once the exhibition concludes.