Speech to launch Ouroboros by Lindy Lee at the National Gallery of Australia
It is a very special honour to be with you to celebrate the extraordinary Lindy Lee and to launch perhaps her greatest work, at least to date, Ouroboros.
Words appropriate to the significance of this occasion are elusive, but vital to capture the nature of this gift to the nation.
The importance of this moment to the Gallery, to one of our most important living artists and her collaborators, and to the cultural role of our capital city must be captured.
Here, on this pocket of land, available to the public day and night …
… bounded on one side by Canberra’s civic buildings and institutions and, on the other, Lake Burley Griffin …
… we bear witness to a magnificent and courageous Australian dream made real.
A place where art and life, history and science coincide and coalesce to link millenia of culture and ideas.
Where the rigid border between imagination and pragmatism, between vision and rationality is challenged, penetrated and, ultimately, dissolved.
Where an immense public sculpture celebrates the personal and universal – and which, at its core, symbolises the potency and significance that Australian art can, and must, have in the social fabric of our country.
For me, this moment is both deeply personal and internationally significant, and I want to thank Nick Mitzevich and the National Gallery of Australia for giving me this rare opportunity to place art and culture at the centre of our nation.
Almost 30 years ago, a group of dear friends commissioned Lindy to create a work as a wedding gift for Simeon and me.
The exquisite work, which was presented to us days before we married in Potts Point in Sydney, has travelled with us wherever we have gone in the decades since.
Lindy’s work and practice has been a constant presence in my life – always bringing joy, wonder and beauty, inspiring curiosity and engagement with themes greater than ourselves.
I now realise that the work in my home, and the next piece I bought from Lindy a few years later, have sat deep in my consciousness, and have played a part in decisions I can now take on the nation’s behalf as your Governor-General.
From the first days of stepping into our new roles, Simeon and I felt deeply the opportunity to celebrate and share the remarkable stories of Australia through the art and artefacts at Government House here in Yarralumla, and at Admiralty House in Kirribilli, Sydney.
We met with Nick to share our ambition, who understood the brief immediately.
With the generous support of the National Gallery of Australia and the Parliament House Art Collection, we have now commenced the process to rehang both houses with magnificent works from our national estate.
Each one is important, and every one is replete with meaning, history and story.
From Paddy Bedford to Bronwyn Oliver, Sally Gabori to Arthur Streeton, Cressida Campbell to Judy Cassab …
… hanging in the public spaces of the official residences – which are so much more domestic in scale than the soaring galleries of the NGA -- these works now sing to each other in a harmonious call and response.
Together, they tell Australia’s story – of who we are, where we have been, and where we seek to be.
Their instruction – often gentle, sometimes a startling awakening – is a portrait of our nation framed by …
… the generous sharing of 65,000 years of Indigenous history and culture
… our British institutions
… and our remarkable multicultural present and future.
And with the visit of their Majesties in our sights, we were able to ensure that Admiralty House would be ready for the moment where a King could reflect on our extraordinary national story as he prepared for his historic tour.
As you would know His Majesty has a deep regard for nature and art.
He travels with a painter to capture the land and seascapes of his travels.
So, it was a joy to work with the remarkable support of the Gallery to lift the sights of Admiralty House – to reflect stories and hopes through the new hanging.
It did not go unnoticed by the King, and the many guests who have spent time in the House over recent days.
We conducted a Roundtable on financial responses preserving nature and the planet in the dining room surrounded by the works of Christopher Pease, Robert Dickerson, Sybil Craig, Frederick McCubbin and Mavis Ngallametta, ceramics by Kunmanara Carroll, and a bark by Uta Uta Tjangala, of the Pintupi people of South Australia.
Ouroboros and Lindy Lee, and the courage of our National Gallery, is intertwined with this story.
Lindy says that art allows her to ask questions about who and what she is.
With a practice that explores her Chinese ancestry and Taoist and Buddhist philosophies, that see humanity and nature inextricably linked, Lindy calls on the element of chance to produce a Galaxy of images that embody the intimate connections between human existence and the cosmos.
As with the body of Lindy’s work to date, Ouroboros is intentionally is slow to impart its secrets – rather than a singular statement, this ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, is a deeply thoughtful grand scale object where meaning emerges from sustained meditation.
Ouroboros is the heart and mind of Lindy Lee rendered in stainless steel.
An extraordinary undertaking, shared with us now after years of meticulous work that, in the remarkable process to bring it to fruition, has involved unique and inspiring collaborations seeing new practices working with stainless steel and in the process ‘creating more ripple effects enriching our culture’, as Lindy says.
It is optimism and clarity, insight and wonder.
And, as a project, it is a symbol of courage and vision: a national art gallery selecting a living Australian artist to mark a 40-year anniversary.
One of youngest cultural institutions championing the place of commissions and amplification of Australian artists to speak to a greater, wider audience.
And, in the process, significantly supporting Canberra to take its place as a national cultural capital.
Lindy you have given us the path for the future, where as you say, Ouroboros ‘will become a beacon – day time or night time, it’s going to pulse with light and energy’.
A magnificent, soaring public work for out times and forever.
Lindy will you join me now in sharing her with the world.