Skywhale’s passport has more stamps on it than most of ours (thank you, Covid) and she has just returned home from a two-year-long, nationwide tour from Albury to Alice Springs.
Since her launch during Canberra’s centenary in 2013, Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhale has featured at the Trans Art Tokyo festival, Ireland’s Galway Arts Festival and the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro. More recently, she’s soared above 10 regional galleries (with Skywhalepapa), so we asked the National Gallery of Australia when we’ll see her buxom profile in our skies again.
“There are no flights scheduled for Canberra at the moment, it’s still all up in the air” (pun intended),” according to NGA communications officer Jess Barnes. However, a conservation requirement is that she flies – somewhere. Jess says that after watching the response in regional towns, “she deserves to be seen elsewhere”. So, how’s the jetlag?
“Skywhale and Skywhalepapa are amazing artworks but also aircraft,” Jess says. “Hot air balloons are required to undergo a thorough annual airworthiness certification and both have passed this extensive test, they are airworthy and in good condition.”
After each flight, conservators and the pilot closely monitor the condition of the balloons and then they are fully condition checked by the Gallery’s textile conservators before they return to their storage boxes.
“Any grass, accretions, staining are removed from the fabric,” Jess says. “They must also be completely dry as the dew from the morning flight will turn to mould and degrade the special balloon fabric.”
Fortunately, regular flying actually helps with the preservation of the artwork. That is, if they actually fly. Skywhale’s last stop in Tamworth had been on hold for five months because of intense weather conditions.
As the artist, Patricia Piccinini says: “one of the things about the skywhales is that you need to be lucky to see them. The wind and weather must be right, essentially nature must allow us to see them and we cannot control that. We are lucky if we get to see them, just like we are lucky if we get to see so many of the wonders of the natural world. It reminds us that not everything is just for us whenever we want it. And that we should be grateful. I really love that”.
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