First time Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhale and Skywhalepapa will visit WA with shows in Albany and Northam

Patricia Piccinini’s skywhales are coming to Western Australia for the first time with two regional shows lined up for May, one on the south coast and another just 95km east of Perth. The 90-minute experience will start in the early hours of May 17 and May 31 as two hyperreal hot air-balloon sculptures are slowly inflated before taking to the skies of Albany and Northam. Piccinini hopes her beloved Skywhale and Skywhalepapa will encourage communities to think about “nature, family, evolution, care and wonder”. “The skywhales float into our lives to make us smile and think,” she said. “Remember to look up — among the amazing creatures that fill the sky, one day you might just see a skywhale too.” The exact flight path will depend on weather, which the leading contemporary artist says is a fitting constraint. “One of the best — and worst — things about this project is that we can only fly if nature allows us,” she said. “We have to have the perfect conditions. “It’s one of the few situations in life when human beings can’t force the world into giving us what we want. “But when nature does allow it, it is all the more wonderful.” The leading contemporary artist is known for her speculative hyperreal artwork that interrogates the relationship between the real and unreal. Her first hot-air balloon sculpture — an imagined flying mammal named Skywhale — was commissioned in 2013 with Skywhalepapa following in 2021. Presented by the National Gallery of Australia, this is the second national tour for Skywhales Across Australia, which will also visit NSW and Queensland. More information is available on the NGA website: nga.gov.au/exhibitions/skywhales-across-australia