The Big Chess Piece

A chess king is a rare subject and formally the most elegant one in this catalogue. It is a turned form – a series of stacked curves narrowing to a cross – designed centuries ago to be recognised instantly by silhouette at small scale in a hand. Enlarged, that silhouette becomes architectural, and unlike a fruit or an animal it looks deliberately designed rather than merely inflated.

There is no chess industry in Upper Ferntree Gully and no local chess history in evidence. The object exists because the park is called Kings Park, which makes it a visual pun in fibreglass – the same logic as the Golden Dog Hotel's dog at Glenreagh and the Big Watermelon market at Wantirna South, where the name comes first and the object follows.

Upper Ferntree Gully sits at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne's outer east, where the suburbs stop and the forest starts.

The catalogue's other Dandenongs object, Igor's giant chair at SkyHigh, is a few kilometres up the hill.

The maker, materials, size and date are not on record.