Look and Wonder: A New Type of Gallery in Australia by Yvonne Van Dongen

The information sign warns walkers to take five litres of water, walk in pairs and wear a hat before setting out to view Antony Gormley’s installation Inside Australia on Lake Ballard. And allow at least two hours to get round all the pieces.

It’s the sort of advice you’d never see in an art gallery but then his 51 sculptures of the human form are set on a 7 km square site on a remote salt lake, 50 km from the nearest town, Menzies, and 650 km east of Perth.

Insiders

The forms are all derived from laser scans of the inhabitants of Menzies. The images were then shrunk to create the alien-like figures Gormley calls “insiders” The metal alloys used were all derived locally.

The figures are set 750m apart and with a horizon which is flat for almost 360 degrees, they seem to shimmer and float like charred skeletons in the distance. An ironstone mound allows a vantage point from where you can see for over 30km in any direction over this ancient landscape.

“The insider reveals an attitude in a taut abstract shape formed by the passage of the person’s life. Out on the salt lake they become antennae in space in relationship with each other but also with the land and the limit of our perception: the horizon,” says Gormley.

Revitalizing the Human Image

The British sculptor created the work as a temporary display for the 2003 Perth International Arts Festival but this year he donated it to the government on condition they pay for maintenance. That includes repairing two of the pieces used as leverage when motorists got bogged on the salt lake.

Gormley is known internationally for revitalizing the human image in sculpture with work such as the enormous Angel of the North in Gateshead, Britain. Inside Australia has already become a drawcard for the quiet goldmining town of Menzies though locals complain tourists only visit the sculptures and see little else.

In any event they’ve achieved Gormley’s stated aim of becoming "an excuse for coming here and thinking about this place and the people who dwell in it. I would like this to be, just in a modest way, another place that people go to look at and wonder."

And look and wonder you certainly do.

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