AS the gigantic, maternalistic Skywhale turns south and prepares to make an appearance above Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in June,  the consequences of her  “untethering” in Canberra unravel.

As usual it’s a scenario that doesn’t do our arts community any credit.

Certainly the Skywhale was expensive – basic estimates of $172,000 rapidly rose to nearly $300,000 when contingencies were added in. But then, as creative director of the Centenary of Canberra, Robyn Archer, told press a few days before her initial showing, Skywhale cost considerably less than a huge “sun” balloon in Melbourne, priced at nearly $800,000 and, compared to the giant Libra tampon balloon she had viewed on her first visit to a balloon festival here, the Skywhale is arguably an object of beauty.

And while we’re on tampons and the like, I see that John Griffiths, the editor of the venerable RiotACT in Canberra, has been pictured in the press modelling a Skywhale hat by ANU student Milly Cooper in which the she-whale’s udders are made of condoms.  Imitation always was the sincerest form of flattery.

Centenary CEO, Jeremy Lasek, was quick to talk up  the promotional exposure for the Canberra as the national capital.

“We’re receiving independent reports that the coverage Skywhale has received is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  Thanks to Skywhale we now have not only national awareness of the Centenary of Canberra, but international awareness as well,” he said.

Archer told a gathering at Strathnairn Homestead a week or so ago that the appearance of the Skywhale on CNN had ensured that millions of  people now know Sydney isn’t the capital city of Australia, one of the Centenary secretariat’s key objectives.

If the public outcry that always accompanies expenditure on public art (we could have supported hospitals, road-building, lost dogs etc) was all-too-predictable, the moans from the ACT arts community were something worse, exposing once again the divide between Canberra’s visual art and music communities that emerged last year in the controversy over use of the Fitters’ Workshop.

Letters asked, why couldn’t the money have been used to fund a series of operatic concerts, or to save the cash-strapped National Eisteddfod and its Aria competition?  As if it were an either/or choice.

Funding for a major Centenary public artwork was never going to come from the same pool as that for the maintenance of a community arts organisation — there is already a bureaucracy in Canberra, managed by artsACT, to do that.

No, the purpose of the Skywhale was to create a unique object to draw admiration, or curiosity (or whatever) about the city of its origin. Canberra is not the first town to have ventured into these waters.

The split in the arts sectors reveals a kind of Philistinism. For beneath the “why couldn’t the money  have gone to” thinking is the suspicion that the Skywhale  is not “worthy” art.

During all the brouhaha, the  purposes of the artists, Canberra-educated Patricia Piccinini, has been all but ignored. It is true that she is far too famous to be known as a Canberran. But it  is also true that for most of her career she has nurtured an interest in “creating” or “cloning” creatures in her sculptures. Let’s hear from her.

When approached by Archer to consider the balloon project, she told her she wanted it to be a serious piece of major art.

Most  critics of the Skywhale won’t give a damn what the artist thought, since they’ve already condemned the work as a piece of expensive wankery. But viewed from a more sympathetic  perspective, the Skywhale in full flight is indeed a unique creation, an experiment in putting a seaborne mammal into the air, with the udders suffer some people find offensive serve as the aerodynamic solution to floating a whale.

“I drew and drew until I was happy,” she says, then consulted the world experts on this kind of creative hot air balloon, Camerons of Bristol. It was, she said, important to get it right, after all. “This is an aeronautical machine, people’s lives could’ve been in danger.”

As the mother of small children, she knew had to be perfectly executed before humans could alight a small basket underneath the creature.

“I didn’t want it to be a kitsch work… I wanted it to be part of my overall practice,” Piccinini says. She argues that Canberra is  a planned city that “aspires to blend the natural and the artificial … that’s what my work is about.”

Piccinini’s idea was that “the Skywhale floats into our lives, she’s not threatening, I wanted to make people smile and wonder, maybe both … she could be a long lost creature or she  could be a genetically modified animal or she  could be some kind of mythical beast, but she’s a wondrous beast.”

One thing’s for sure, she’s “a catalyst for conversation,”  as the centenary puts it, and we all know that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Yes, it is true that a balloon’s life is shorter than, say, “Blue Poles,” but her impact is likely to be more lasting than her fleeting Canberra appearances would suggest.

Did I say “she”? Everyone’s saying  it, suggesting that the Skywhale’s already been taken into the minds if not the hearts of Canberrans. The  Centenary office says ordinary Canberrans have been “blown away” by the giant airborne mammal.

A postscript, my son was so taken with her that he tweeted, “I love you, Skywhale.”

“I love you too,” the Skywhale tweeted back.