Australia Letter A weekly newsletter from our Australian branch. sign up To get it by email, click here This week’s issue was written by Northern Territory-based reporter Julia Bergin.
Cars are traveling from left to right across three lanes of a highway.
“There’s a 100mm hit on your left. Stay calm and continue straight,” the driver says over the radio.
Behind him come two cars with road signs on their roofs warning “Large Cargo Ahead,” then two police escort vehicles, and finally the centerpiece of the motorcade, a huge truck coasting along carrying a 14-ton work of art.
Covered in film and netting and held in place by a heavy frame, the giant metal sculpture is valued at around $10 million. A convoy of support vehicles stretched out on the road for just under a mile earlier this week. The entire convoy took five and a half days to travel from Brisbane to the country’s capital, Canberra, to reach its destination. The piece, titled Ouroboros and created by Australian artist Lindy Lee, will be on display at the National Gallery of Australia for 500 years.
Given time and space, a long stay may require a short drive. Maybe that’s not so special for some. All over the world, artworks are packaged, loaded into various modes of transport, and transported from point A to point B. But in Australia, the vastness of the geography and unique challenges create an experience that may be unfamiliar to those moving artworks in other regions.
Nick Mitzevich, director of the National Gallery of Australia, said it was not unusual for art to be transported by boat rather than by truck around the country because shocks, dust, extreme heat, mountainous terrain and winding roads could damage the works.
“We’re not necessarily looking for the shortest route, but the route that will have the least disruption to the artwork,” Mitzevich said, explaining why Lee’s giant snake sculpture, made from polished stainless steel and eating its own tail, chose the “scenic route.”
The direct route from Brisbane to Canberra is about 735 miles, but the motorcade transporting the sculpture traveled about 1,240 miles, passing through three jurisdictions – Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory – along dense urban roads at night and long open country roads during the day.
Delays occurred due to fog, unexpected road construction, oncoming vehicles ignoring police blockades, and road maintenance along the way, including removing signs and cutting down trees. Depending on the hazards and conditions, vehicle travel speeds varied from 3 miles per hour to 50 miles per hour.
“Ouroboros” author Lee accompanied the convoy for the entire journey and said he was awed by the drivers’ ability to navigate dangerous terrain and incredibly tight spaces.
“I was reversing out of a car park at Westfield and my little car just scraped by!,” she said, referring to one of Australia’s major shopping centres, “and they were driving this giant car literally within an inch of the wall.”
She marveled at the skill and scale of the record-breaking operation – who would have expected this to be the largest item ever to move through downtown Canberra?
Heavy Hauling Assets’ transport manager, John Kelly, said in typical Australian understatement that the move itself wasn’t difficult.
In Kelly’s 25 years in the business, he and his team have transported items like offshore oil rigs measuring 74 yards high and 38 yards wide, tunnel boring machines and cranes. Moving a work of art was his first experience, but Kelly said the same technical rules applied.
“Execution-wise, it was a two out of 10. But administratively, it was 11.75 out of 10,” he said with a laugh, listing two years’ worth of approvals, permits, feasibility studies and capability tests it took to prove his company was fit for the job.
“I deal with Canberra, I deal with the National Gallery, I deal with people and consortia who are used to moving objects a tenth of the size,” he added. “They come from a very different profession to my trade in transport and are a pretty sensitive bunch.”
Shipping is well known in the art world, but few artists are deeply involved in it: works are usually either completed and shipped to where they are needed, or assembled on-site by the artist.
But for Lee and Kelly, their week-long trip on the Ouroboros quickly bridged that gap, dispelling common assumptions they had about each other’s worlds.
“Honestly, we thought Lindy would just come for the first few hours and then disappear and meet us in Canberra, but she remained steadfast throughout the journey,” Mr Kelly said. “She never left my driver or the truck for the entire journey.”
“I think she may have now moved on to being a lorry driver,” he added.
The commute also became a cultural experience for the wider community of truck drivers, who encountered the sculpture and its heavy security entourage when it stopped at a heavy vehicle rest area in a large rural town.
Lee said many people tilted their heads in amazement and asked what on earth it was, but for her, explaining to onlookers that her piece was no intergalactic import only added to its purpose.
“My work is about connection,” Lee says.
“It’s really changed me, and I owe it all to how amazing they are.”
Well, here’s this week’s story.
Traveling through the ages
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