Lindy Lee sculpture a shooting star at Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney

The 5m sculpture is illuminated from within and is about the light of a dying star.

Lindy Lee's sculpture outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, called Secret World of a Starlight Ember.

In July, artist Lindy Lee learned that the Museum of Contemporary Art would be unable to commission the fabrication of a large, stainless steel sculpture to sit outside the gallery at Sydney’s Circular Quay, because of the pandemic and financial uncertainty.

“I was disappointed,” Lee said on Thursday. “But I was almost determined that it was going to happen, I just didn’t know how.”

The universe must have been smiling on Lee, because her sculpture called Secret World of a Starlight Ember has landed like a shooting star on the MCA forecourt, on the eve of a major retrospective of her work.

The 5m sculpture, ovoid in shape and with a “portal” through the middle, is perforated with tiny holes like a constellation of stars. It is illuminated from within, and Lee said was best enjoyed at dusk.

“The poetics of starlight are incredible,” she said. “I love the idea that a star that died 100 million years ago, we are still receiving the light of. The ember of a dying star — we are still blessed by that. We are said to be made of the stuff of stardust. It’s about our connection to the universe.”

Workers install Secret World of a Starlight Ember by artist Lindy Lee outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Picture: Joel Carrett / NCA NewsWire

Secret World of a Starlight Ember joins similar works by Lee including The Life of Stars, outside the Art Gallery of South Australia on Adelaide’s North Terrace, and public artworks in locations from Shanghai to Washington, DC.

The retrospective exhibition, opening on Friday, is called Moon in a Dew Drop and has been curated by the MCA’s director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor.

Lee’s work is inspired by her Chinese-Australian heritage, and she draws on Chinese philosophical and aesthetic traditions, such as Zen, Daoism, scholar stones and “flung ink” paintings, which Lee executes in molten bronze.

Artist Lindy Lee with her sculpture The Life of Stars outside the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. Picture: Matt Loxton / AAP

“Her work beautifully describes how she was impressed by European art, and moves to an exploration of her Chinese heritage and that comes through very clearly in the show,” Macgregor said.

The commissioning cost of Secret World of a Starlight Ember was underwritten by Brisbane art fabrication company UAP. It will remain at the MCA for a year, after which it is available for sale.

“If somebody would like to buy it, it could stay there,” Macgregor said. “That’s a bit of a pipe dream at the moment… It would become a new public art work for Sydney.”