BY GILLIAN LORDALL PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, AND TOLARNO AND ROSLYN OXLEY9 GALLERIES

| A R T I S T | Patricia Piccinini

LOOK UP IN WO N D E R

THE HEADLINE IN THE WIMMERA MAIL-TIMES

ONLINE EDITION OF 26 APRIL 2013 IS A STUDY IN

UNDERSTATEMENT. “MYSTERIOUS HOT-AIR BALLOON

INTRIGUES WIMMERA” IT SAYS POLITELY, WITH A STORY

ABOUT A STARTLED NATIMUK RESIDENT, IAIN SEDGMAN,

WHO LOOKED OUT AND SAW SOMETHING “SHAPED LIKE

A FISH OR PARROT WITH SEVERAL BREASTS ON EACH

SIDE” ALMOST LAND IN HIS BACK PADDOCK AT 8AM,

THEN FLOAT UP AND OFF AGAIN.

Patricia Piccinini, Skywhale, 2013Hot air balloon, commissioned for The Centenary of CanberraCourtesy the artist and the Australian Capital Territory Government, represented by Tolarno and Roslyn Oxley9 Galleries.

34 | CAPITAL CAPITAL | 35

36 | CAPITAL CAPITAL | 37

T H E P U B L I C WAS G OA D E D TO TREAT THIS NEW WORK OF ART [SKY WHALE] AS IF IT WERE PART

OF A BEAUTY OR POPULARITY CONTEST

Doubting Thomas, 2008silicone, fi breglass, human hair, clothing, chair90cm high x 100 x 53cmPhoto: Graham Baring

Really, that must have been a WTF moment in a place credited with a

population of 449 in the 2006 census. It was also Skywhale’s early debut on the national – and world – stage, as astonished locals photographed the “strange apparition” drifting gracefully past Mt Arapiles on a clear blue morning. You can’t keep quiet about Skywhale, and so before the offi cial launch in Canberra on May 11, the images were already out there, it was already making news.

Up there in the balloon over Mt Arapiles that early autumn was sculptor Patricia Piccinini, the creator of Skywhale, thrilled, exhilarated, and rather nervous. It was Skywhale’s test fl ight in Australian skies.

“It’s a special shaped balloon,’’ she says, without a hint of irony. “It moves around a lot, it has a small low basket, you can only fi t three in the balloon, it sort of rocks around a bit.”

She adds that it was amazing to feel almost physically part of her sculpture on that calm morning as they fl oated on, quite unaware of the storm that would break over her extraordinary creature.

When the 10-teated Skywhale’s huge, kindly face offi cially loomed over the national capital, and from it, out to the world, the reaction was electric. Opinions

fl owed freely, there was tub-thumping, chest-beating, fi st-waving and invective, there was praise-singing, hand-waving, laughter, applause. In a city where the narrative about public art can be reduced to two repetitive notes – cost and outrage - the Skywhale seemed like a sacrifi cial, um, mammal on the altar of opportunity.

In its wake sprang legions of experts, waves of accusers, bands of supporters, and whether Piccinini intended it or not, Skywhale suddenly had Canberra talking about itself. A lot. Never mind what the rest of the country – and the world – was saying.

On Skywhale’s home shores, the chorus of indignation swirled around costs as well as appearance. When it transpired it had cost Canberra taxpayers around $334,000 all up, (with Piccinini being paid just $8,000 of that, which she says mostly went on in-studio costs) the howling intensifi ed. Just days after the launch, creative director of the Centenary of Canberra, Robyn Archer – she who commissioned the Skywhale – waded into the fray with an eloquent opinion piece in The Austalian. She reminded us that the balloon itself is a feat in hot-air balloon technology (and, after all, Canberra is a ballooning city) before she noted that, in terms of public art, “Skywhale is less expensive than most existing public art

in Canberra, about half the cost of eight hours of international day-night cricket and one-quarter the cost of four days of women’s golf.”

Taking aim at what she identifi ed as parochial public opinion, she added, “The public was goaded to treat this new work of art as if it were part of a beauty or popularity contest. This raises serious questions for those who champion the arts: when did the public start insisting that all art be ‘beautiful’?”

Referencing Piccinini’s oeuvre and inspirations, she noted that the Canberra-raised and -educated sculptor is arguably among our most famous internationally acclaimed exports, and that the enduring quality of much of her work contains the question, “what if?’’

The Listener, 2013Silicone, fi breglass, human hair, speaker cabinet.

Indeed, that was a reference point for Skywhale, with Piccinini looking att creation, and wondering what would have happened if things had turned out differently, if the whale, an anomaly in itself, being a mammal and living in the sea, had taken to the air instead?

“I was thinking about the way that Canberra is this very planned city,’’ says Piccinini on her website, “but very focused on the landscape, and in its ideal it aspires to blend the natural and the artifi cial, and this really fi ts with the ideas in my work. So it seemed that some sort of colossal, airborne creature would be perfect.’’

While the collected works of Piccinini temporarily got lost in the initial clamour, this gentle, serene artist has had a signifi cant international profi le long before Skywhale, having exhibited internationally, and not without controversy, since 1995. She made a signifi cant impact at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 with We Are Family, featuring strangely appealing and bizarre creatures that provoke

questions of evolution, transgenics, genetic engineering and the future. These themes remain a hallmark of her work.

Conversation with Patricia Piccinini frequently zooms out to a big picture, her mind is enquiring and provocative, it’s as if she draws together elements of creation, history, the cosmos, the

[PAT R I C I A P I CC I N I N I] HAS HAD A S IGNIF ICANT INTERNATIONAL PROFILE

LONG BEFORE SKYWHALE, HAVING EXHIBITED INTERNATIONALLY, AND NOT

WITHOUT CONTROVERSY, S INCE 1995

The Young Family, 2002Silicone, fi breglass, leather, human hair, plywood85cm high x 150cm long x 120cm wide approx.Photo: Graham Baring

future, and fi nds a physical shape that would embody that. She’s softly spoken, intelligent, and apparently entirely without destructive ego.

Right now we’re talking about the coelacanth, having moved a step away from whales that may fl y. The coelacanth, incidentally, is truly a fi sh that walked,

thought to have been long, long extinct until one turned up, very much alive, on the east coast of South Africa in 1938.

She Googles it as we speak, and it’s obvious her knowledge of evolution and anatomy is well above that of a layman. She’s truly delighted by the coelacanth. It’s no surprise that she began her career as a painter in the early 1980s with work

based on anatomical studies. “Really, nature is amazing, it inspires me,’’ she says.

“What I make isn’t real, but it [the

coelacanth] can adapt,

change, our coelacanth can walk out of the sea, it found a way to adapt, to breathe.’’ Soon she has drawn in feminism and new ways of seeing, without losing touch with her theme, the re-enchantment of nature. Recently she has been getting much inspiration from the works of the late Australian eco-feminist, intellectual and activist, Val Plumwood.

She’s also recently re-made the Skywhale too, or rather another image of it, this time defl ated, a painting as a series of public artworks on the Hoddle Street Wall in Melbourne, site of the city’s Bakehouse Studios. Even that made news. But don’t think there’s a deep and hidden message in the defl ated Skywhale, it’s just another way of looking at it. She says she loves it because it’s “kind of primitive and beautiful”.

38 | CAPITAL CAPITAL | 39

40 | CAPITAL CAPITAL | 41

The Skywhale balloon was built by Cameron Balloons in Bristol in the United Kingdom. The colours, patterns and textures were printed onto 3.5km of fabric, she was cut and sewn together by a team of six people using approximately 3.3 million stitches, and all up it took 16 people seven months to design and make her. The Skywhale is an Australian

Registered aircraft, controlled by a pilot and operated under the Australian Standards pertaining to aviation. She stands about 24 metres high, is some 36 metres long when infl ated and she weighs half a tonne. So a rather large whale then.

She has her own Facebook page, and a legion of followers and fans who gather to wonder at her as she makes her stately way around Australia. She has offi cial and unoffi cial fan merchandise that springs up in her wake, and she makes news wherever she goes. Equally, she has legions of detractors. Everyone has a Skywhale opinion.

There are other smaller creatures that have changed Canberra’s landscape – Doug Waterhouse and CSIRO’s introduction of the dung beetle to the capital, and indeed the country, for example, which greatly cut down the numbers of fl ies, and is locally credited with allowing Canberrans the possibility of actually eating outdoors without being endlessly harassed. But no creature of quite the Skywhale’s stature has crossed our horizons before now.

What does Piccinini think of all the fuss that she generated? After all, she said she wanted to create

something auspicious, something that inspired a sense of wonder, something unexpected.

“I’ve had the most amazing responses,’’ she says. “People have made hats, cakes, glass ones, T-shirts, badges, costumes, it’s been featured in political commentaries and cartoons, she’s become an adjective, a noun, and a verb.”

She particularly likes the Skywhale song, which you can fi nd on YouTube, she thinks it’s catching and clever. She found it “really inspiring, that there are these clever people out there, responding to my work and making their own. There is a lot of creativity in Canberra and that was a fantastic example of it.’’

And she still remembers the thrill when a friend texted from Austria, on his way to work, on a tram, after he’d just seen the Skywhale pop up on a television screen. She loves that Skywhale has made such a global impact. Of course there’s been criticism, she says, but most of it is about the nature of public art, what we should spend on it. She is accustomed to the vehement reactions her art inspires, people love it or hate it.

When pressed – because she’d really rather think about her art – she says “I do think that people don’t have a sense of the value of art. [Criticism about cost] is a way of responding to the work without having to respond to it – I think in some ways Skywhale evokes reactions in people that are diffi cult to understand, and [criticising cost] makes it easy to dismiss. Also [costs and funding] is a convenient political football – and the arts are underfunded, that’s very true.’’

Indeed, as Robyn Archer noted in her deft opinion piece last year, there were those who said, why not a balloon of “the Canberra Bluebell, a gang-gang cockatoo or Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffi n holding hands.’’

“Had we gone that way,’’ Archer wrote, “there would have been little new conversation and our media reach would not have extended to dozens of countries, hundreds of media outlets and thousands of tweets in Australia and worldwide. Many have applauded the risk-taking as an indicator of signs that cultural sophistication is on the rise in the national capital.’’

As to the future, Piccinini would love it if the Skywhale could truly call Canberra home. Sure, she can make her way around the country, on tour, as she does now, but she’d really like her to live in Canberra. “That’s my dream for her. She belongs there, that’s her people, her natural habitat…I’ve just got to fi nd some way to make this happen, rather than having her sitting in a bag, all locked up.’’ She loves the idea that people could see her by chance on their way to work, or go to visit her on weekend outings, step outside to see her fl oat by, or help pack her up when she comes down again.

“She brings a lot of joy to people,’’ Piccinini says, “people have really connected to her. It’s auspicious, it’s a sense of ‘ I’m lucky today’, if you see her.’’

And as to the question of whether she is art, what the Skywhale actually is, Archer began her opinion piece “Most artists show their work within spaces dedicated to the arts. It requires bravery to work outside these protective environments and their largely sympathetic audiences. The Skywhale is not branded as a work of art; it is simply there, open to whatever response the public wishes to make.

The Lovers, 2011Fibreglass, auto paint, leather, scooter parts202 x 205 x 130 cmPhoto: Graham Baring

Patricia Piccinini

Natures Li� le HelpersArcadia , 2005Digital type C photograph80 × 160cm Domain , 2005Digital type C photograph80 × 160cm

Still Life With Stem Cells, 2002Silicone, polyurethane, human hair, clothing, carpet.Lifesize, dimensions variablePhoto: Graham Baring

40 | CAPITAL