The Skywhale's first flight
In May this year, sculptor Patricia Piccinini took her art to the skies, constructing a hot air balloon in the shape of a whale to honour Canberra's centenary. Vision supplied.
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Slandered and celebrated in Canberra, artist Patricia Piccinini's many-breasted hot-air balloon, Skywhale, is set to take to Melbourne's skies.
Weather permitting, Skywhale will be tethered in the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art forecourt in Southbank on December 2.
Thought-provoking and controversial artist Piccinini will discuss her floating whale with arts administrator Robyn Archer in a ticketed event at ACCA's auditorium. Ms Archer commissioned the $300,000 work for the Centenary of Canberra celebrations this year.
Piccinini used 3.5 kilometres of fabric to create the 34-metre-long and 23-metre-high hot-air balloon whale.
Answering questions about the work on Skywhale's website, Piccinini said blue whales were of interest to her as the largest creature to have lived.
"On one level, this is very much a work about wonder, about showing people something extraordinary that floats in and out of their day and leaves them pondering over what they just saw," she said.
"On another level, Skywhale for me is something of a meditation on nature and evolution, which are two things that fascinate me."
The work was initially unveiled in the National Gallery of Australia during the Sculpture: Space and Place symposium. It has flown several times in Canberra and once in Tasmania at the Museum of Old and New Art.
While Piccinini holds the intellectual rights to the work, it is operated by Melbourne's Global Ballooning.
Global Ballooning director and chief pilot Kiff Saunders said the balloon was expected to make a number of invitation-only flights across Melbourne in the coming months but would not be available to commercial passengers.
"The nature of these special-shaped balloons is that they are an experimental thing, they are not designed for commercial passengers," Mr Saunders said.
He said the balloon would be travelling to the Adelaide Festival and to international balloon festivals. He and Piccinini had also discussed flying the balloon at international art galleries.
Mr Saunders said he had not heard of Piccinini's work before Global Ballooning won its tender to operate Skywhale but understood what the artist was trying to achieve with it.
"If you think about children, they don't see beauty like we do. We have a perception of beauty, but there are many animals in the world and who's to say which ones are beautiful and which are not.
"The Skywhale has been compared to a mother and a mother that is loved – with these big mammary glands hanging down. And it seems to me the message is no matter how you look, you are loved," Mr Saunders said.
Like any modern art, Skywhale has her own Twitter account, @theskywhale and website www.theskywhale.com
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