A career defining ten year commissioned project for McLaren, that I never even dreamt of let alone saw coming. A 10 year project to create life-size effigies of McLarens eight world driver champions to stand next to their cars on the iconic MTC Boulevard, founder Bruce watching over them like a proud father with his high achieving children…. is my concept. And I still struggle to compute the enormity of this today, seven years into the project. That something so permanent, that I have created for arguably the worlds greatest F1 museum, and revered by so many so close to the actual subjects of the sculpture, is unprecedented as it is ridiculous. ‘McLaren Monuments’ is a project driven by celebration, history, remembrance, story telling, by fans and for fans. I worked for a year of my own volition to create Senna ‘Eau Rouge’, simply because Ayrton was the reason I first grew to love F1 back in the mid to late 80s, as a British teen I was inherently a fan of McLaren and of Senna. ‘Eau Rouge’ was unveiled in early 2019, immediately went viral, and although McLaren were in the loop all through its creation, I never expected them to be the buyer, and to show the sculpture alongside Ayrton’s title winning cars on their famous boulevard. It may as well be the artwork that I introduce myself by ‘Ahhhh that was you!?’ I hear almost weekly, as every notable in every paddock knows of it. A few months later in May 2019, the indomitable Niki Lauda passed away, who besides his two world titles for Ferrari and later connection with Mercedes, was McLaren’s world drivers champion in 1984. I was immediately called in to their Monaco motorhome to discuss creating a bronze statue for him also… a 10 minute meeting with Zak Brown that escalated fast ‘Why don’t we do all the champions, and Bruce as well?’ Zak being one of the biggest fans of motorsport history I’ve ever met, we had most of the statue’s poses nailed down immediately too in that same 10 minutes. I distinctly remember Zak banging the table as he stood to leave ‘You can do this, right?” as I’m sat there shell shocked nodding yes, yet in reality having no place to be so sure. And here we are, 2/3rds of the way through the project, each and every sculpture created referencing raced assets from McLaren’s extensive archives, each one bringing new challenges to the fore, before the statues begin creating their own story that is out of my hands, after they’re installed at MTC Woking. Every time I see them again they’re in a new arrangement, for a new presentation or anniversary, for a new audience; they’re McLaren’s artworks now, not mine.