National Gallery of Australia splurges $14m on ‘steel snake’

The $14m sculpture by Lindy Lee, called Ouroboros, will be installed in the gallery’s garden.

An impression of Ouroboros, the 13-tonne sculpture to be made by Lindy Lee.

A $14m stainless steel sculpture by artist Lindy Lee has been commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

The sculpture, to stand 4m high and weigh in at 13 tonnes, will be large enough to walk into. It is the major commission to mark the NGA’s 40th anniversary next year.

Lee’s sculpture, called Ouroboros, is the most expensive artwork the NGA has purchased.

It will be funded through the gallery’s dedicated acquisitions budget from the federal government, known as the cultural development fund and worth some $16m annually.

While the commission is fully covered by the development fund, the gallery will also seek ­private donors to contribute to the cost.

Lee, who has Chinese heritage, lives and works in northern NSW. Her work is often inspired by philosophical traditions such as Zen and Daoism.

She is represented in corporate and public collections internationally. Her large stainless-steel sculptures, similar in construction to Ouroboros, have been seen recently outside the Art Gallery of SA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, where she was the subject of a retrospective exhibition.

The NGA did not seek expressions of interest from artists for the 40th anniversary commission, but instead invited Lee to come up with an ambitious proposal of her own.

The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake eating its tail. Visitors will be able to walk inside the self-supporting sculpture, to be made of highly reflective stainless steel and perforated with tiny holes.

Artist Lindy Lee. Picture: Zoe Wesolowski-Fisher

Lee said she wanted her sculpture to be a beacon, attracting attention with its reflective surface and inner illumination at night.

“The ouroboros is symbolic of repetition and renewal, of the abundance of cyclical time, eternal flow, unity of the beginning and the end, transformation and alchemy,” she said in a statement.

The gallery did not disclose a breakdown of costs, but the most expensive part of the acquisition is the fabrication. Ouroboros will be constructed at Urban Art Projects in Brisbane.

The NGA was opened by the Queen in 1982.

Lee’s sculpture is expected to be installed in the gallery’s garden in early 2024, two years after the anniversary.