An Unofficial Rose for St Christopher
An Unofficial Rose for St Christopher
1994
Bronze, edition of 6
Cast by Ken Cook
Signed McDonald
80 × 63 × 55 cm
An Unofficial Rose for St Christopher is one of Stephanie McDonald’s most elaborate coloured bronze flower sculptures of the mid-1990s. A branching arrangement of large white flowers rises from a tall turquoise-green vase, the stems, leaves and vessel unified by richly varied green patination.
Although recognisably a vase of flowers, the sculpture moves beyond conventional still life. The flowers spread outwards and upwards into space, each bloom individually modelled and deliberately irregular. Their curling petals retain the evidence of hand modelling, giving the bronze an immediacy and fragility that works against the permanence and weight of the material.
Colour is fundamental to the sculpture. The pale flowers appear almost startling against the saturated turquoise-green stems and vase. The coloured patination, developed in collaboration with founder Ken Cook, allows separate parts of the bronze to retain distinct identities while remaining part of a single sculptural structure.
The work belongs to a period in which McDonald repeatedly transformed familiar motifs from painting, domestic still life and the natural world into three-dimensional objects. Flowers, fruit, vessels and other ordinary things become enlarged and physically assertive, while retaining the irregular surfaces of the original modelling.
The title, An Unofficial Rose for St Christopher, introduces a more elusive literary and devotional dimension. Rather than functioning simply as botanical description, it turns the bouquet into an offering: something poised between still life, memorial and emblem.
Exhibition history
1994
Coventry Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
Included in Stephanie McDonald’s solo sculpture exhibition; the work is visible in surviving installation photography.
1995
Delaney Galleries, Perth, Western Australia.
Included in the artist’s exhibition and documented in surviving installation photographs.
1996
Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
Solo exhibition. A contemporary Art + Australia listing records Stephanie McDonald (Burns) at Christine Abrahams Gallery. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by John McDonald.
Collections and provenance
Bronze edition of 6.
I — recorded
II — recorded in the artist’s ledger
III — recorded
IV — recorded
V — recorded
VI — sold through Christine Abrahams Gallery, $10,000
Collections and provenance
A cast of An Unofficial Rose for St Christopher has a particularly well-documented history. A 2025 auction catalogue records provenance through Coventry Gallery, Sydney; Delaney Galleries, Perth; and Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne, followed by later exhibition at Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney, and Orion Sculpture Park, Yass.
Another cast entered the collection of Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland.
This history places the work firmly within the sequence of major Australian exhibitions through which Stephanie McDonald’s coloured bronzes were shown during the 1990s and subsequently displayed in public and private collections.
Literature
1994
David Matthews, catalogue essay, Coventry Gallery, Sydney.
1995
David Bromfield, The West Australian.
1996
John McDonald, catalogue essay accompanying Stephanie McDonald’s exhibition at Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne.
Archival record
The artist’s ledger records bronze casting costs of £3,400, with an earlier figure of £3,000 plus freight, and a mould cost of £1,850.
A later bronze inventory records the work as An Unofficial Rose: For St Christopher, dated 1995 and measuring 80 × 68 × 60 cm. The artist’s original ledger records the work as 1994 and 80 × 63 × 55 cm; the ledger measurements and date are used here.