By Liz Hobday

It’s the biggest thing artist Lindy Lee has ever done – not to mention the biggest thing the National Gallery of Australia has ever done.

The gallery’s $14 million commission, Ouroboros, was unveiled in Canberra on Thursday to mark the venue’s 40th anniversary.

The polished stainless steel sculpture stands about four metres high – so big it’s possible to walk inside – and is marked with thousands of small perforations.

During the day, it reflects passers-by, while at night it is lit from within, pulsing light back into the world, according to the artist.

Ouroboros represents a snake eating its tail, an ancient symbol of renewal, or the eternal cycle of life.

The sculpture was fabricated in Brisbane and trucked to Canberra in a massive operation that took about a week.

Lee is a leading contemporary artist who has been working for more than four decades and has exhibited her work worldwide.

Sydney and Adelaide residents will already be familiar with her public sculpture, with smaller stainless steel works installed outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

CityNews Arts editor Helen Musa writes from the launch: It wasn’t the fact that Ouroboros had cost $14 million and weighed 13 tonnes, Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke told the large crowd at the morning unveiling, or that it had involved 60,000 working hours and 200 people, or even that it featured 45,000 holes made by hand that made the sculpture great, but rather that it “captures your imagination, makes you want to walk within and be within the work of art.”

And it meant that from now on, day and night, for anybody driving along King Edward Terrace who didn’t already know it, the sculpture would clearly signal, “there is a gallery here”.

Mr Burke praised Lee for all she had given to Australia, adding that in such a week for royalty, he had had no hesitation in pronouncing her to be “art royalty”.

Director of the NGA Nick Mitzevich, for his part, said that the sculpture had been in mind for at least four years, beginning when he and NGA chair Ryan Stokes met Lee as part of a thrust to “rectify” the building and its surrounds.

Lee said the vision of the sculpture went back to her childhood when she noticed particles of light reflecting off the dust in her Brisbane home. The completion of the sculpture, she said, put an end to the feeling of “un-belonging” that she had grown up in the White Australia Policy era.

Working with Ngunnawal elder Jude Barlow, Lee added, she had discovered that there were many elements of Chinese and First Nations philosophy that she combined in this sculpture.

The actual unveiling was left to Governor-General Sam Mostyn, who, in an unusually personal vice-regal speech, revealed that her husband Simeon were the proud owners of a commissioned wedding gift by Lee and that they had later purchased another of her artworks.

She praised the NGA and Mitzevich for having been so helpful to her in the hasty rehang of Admiralty House for the recent royal visit.

And, for all that, she agreed with the Arts Minister that Lindy Lee was indeed “Australian art royalty”.

Ouroboros is now visible from King Edward Terrace 24 hours a day. The accompanying exhibition, Lindy Lee, is the NGA, October 25 -June 1.