First look inside the 13-tonne, $14 million artwork coming to the National Gallery

A $60 million update of the National Gallery of Australia’s Sculpture Garden will illuminate the site at night, but nothing will shine as bright as artist Lindy Lee’s $14 million sculpture of a snake cannibalising its tail.

Unlike the Lee project, Australia’s biggest art commission, which some have criticised as a misuse of public money, the first major revitalisation of the Canberra gallery’s Sculpture Garden since its creation in 1981 will be funded by donations from philanthropists.

Gallery director Dr Nick Mitzevich said seven connected new gardens would circle the building. They would double the space for public art and cultural events, creating a destination where visitors would feel enveloped by art and architecture.

Lindy Lee’s massive work, Ouroboros, will take pride of place. From October 25, it will be open to the public to walk through and around near the gallery’s entrance on King Edward Terrace.

Mitzevich likened Lee’s four-metre-high sculpture to stainless-steel lace that would last 500 years.

“In the daytime, it reflects the world, and at nighttime, it becomes a gigantic lantern that attracts people. So the work is a beacon for art and ambition,” he said.

The NGA will announce on Thursday that a multidisciplinary team has won the design competition for the new gardens. The jury said the group comprising CO-AP Studio, architect Phillip Arnold of Plus Minus Design, Studio JEF, and TARN was selected because of their respect for the garden’s history and heritage.

Award-winning Sydney architect Arnold said the team normally “didn’t do” competitions. “But we just had so much love for the Sculpture Garden itself that this was a good reason to engage,” he said.

Before entering, they visited the garden, which often attracts families and visitors who say they are not “art people”.

Arnold said they found the garden needed a bit more love, a refresh, and some renewal. “What happens with gardens is that they’re planted, and then monocultures take over.”

As well as improving the seating and accessibility of the paths through the site, the lighting will change by time of day and season, allowing visitors to linger long after the gallery closes its doors.

Over the next year, the CO-AP team will refine the design, which includes a forecourt between the gallery and the National Portrait Gallery and High Court and a stainless-steel pavilion that will reflect the casuarina trees to the east.

The proposed gardens include grassy woodland, parkland, eucalypt forest, ferns, shrubland, and an ephemeral creek bed near Lee’s snake.

The revamp will retain existing sculptures by James Turrell, Tracey Emin, Clement Meadmore, Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, and the family favourites: Bert Flugelman’s shiny cones and Fujiko Nakaya’s fog sculpture. Other works will be added from the collection, and it will also aim to increase the representation of female and First Nations artists.

National Gallery of Australia director Dr Nick Mitzevich with Pear - version number 2, 1973, by George Baldessin.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Queensland-born Lee told ABC’s Compass that Mitzevich had commissioned her to “come up with the biggest, most ambitious thing she could think of” to mark the gallery’s 40th anniversary.

Responding to criticism about the size of the commission, Mitzevich said Lee was one of the world’s most interesting artists today.

“I think it’s a very serious endeavour, and I think that people can and should ask for us to be able to justify the cost. And I believe when you see the work, you can see the craftsmanship,” he said.

What it took to build the $14 million Ouroboros

• Three years
• 200 people
• 60,000 hours of labour
• 45,000 perforations 
• Thousands of offcuts of scrap steel

Hundreds of people worked on the project. “And we’ve created one of the most extraordinary objects of public art to be commissioned in Australia.”

The snake or serpent eating its tail is a symbol of renewal. Lee told the ABC she wanted to create “something that invoked infinity, a sense of inclusiveness, a sense that everything under the heavens is connected”.

The gardens’ full design team also includes Will Fung and Liat Busqila of CO-AP, First Nations consultant Bradley Mapiva Brown (Bagariin Ngunnawal Cultural Consulting).

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