David Capra & Teena

From 7 September – 3 November 2019, David Capra and his charismatic dachshund, Teena, launched the Kaldor Studio with their unique brand of wonder and whimsy. Inspired by the perennial audience favourite, Jeff Koons’ Puppy, 1995, their participatory artwork, Puppy Love, 2019, took the form of a 2.5-metre high timber dachshund against a backdrop of Capra's playful illustrations. Puppy Love was enthusiastically embraced by visitors, who decorated the sculpture with around 20,000 personal floral tributes.

Teena is quite the publicity hound. In 2016 she appeared on the 9 Network's Today Show to promote her own fragrance, Eau de Wet Dogge. In 2015, Teena's Bathtime was launched at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia's Jackson Bella Room, where visitors related to Teena's experiences around anxiety—Teena doesn’t quite enjoy bathtime. In 2018, David and Teena performed 'The long and short of it: Life lessons from art-dog Teena' to an audience of 5000 people at TEDx Sydney, and answered the question “What makes a dachshund the perfect muse?“ in an article for The Guardian newspaper. Most recently, David and Teena collaborated with Kaldor Public Art Projects, producing a series of Teena Takes on... educational videos unpacking the Kaldor Public Art Projects archives.

Special thanks to Gandel Philanthropy as Major Education Partner for the exhibition
Kaldor Studio artists were generously supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund