A gigantic sculpture representing renewal and the cycle of life will outlive generations of visitors who walk inside the shiny coil over an expected lifespan of five centuries.
The National Gallery of Australia's biggest commission, the $14 million Ouroboros was unveiled in Canberra on Thursday.
The polished stainless steel sculpture stands about four metres high - so big it's possible to walk inside - and is marked with 45,000 perforations of various sizes.
Artist Lindy Lee said the ceremonial unveiling was an incredible moment and a big relief.
"For four years, I have been living and breathing this and every ounce of anxiety that I've had that's been accumulating over this time has all of a sudden dropped away," she told reporters.
The cost of the commission prompted debate when it was announced, perhaps making it the most controversial acquisition for the national collection since the $1.3 million purchase of Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles in 1973.
But Ouroboros already seems popular, with people posing for selfies in front of it and schoolchildren lining up to take a peek inside.
"Wow, look at that," said one visitor.
"It's very special. It looks good," said another.
The sculpture will appear very different depending on the light, reflecting the pool it sits above, the trees and sky during the day, and radiating light through its many perforations at night.
"By day, she's receiving the imagery of the world, and at night she's returning that energy through her light," Lee said.
Ouroboros represents a snake eating its tail, an ancient symbol of renewal, or the eternal cycle of life.
A path leads across the water so people can walk inside the sculpture and it's here that Ouroboros has exceeded even the artist's expectations.
"The incredible thing is that it's better than what I imagined ... she is like a Tardis, she's quite big from the outside but actually when you enter her she becomes immense," Lee told reporters.
"The work is an exemplar of the ingenuity and creativity that the national collection strives to encapsulate," said gallery director Dr Nick Mitzevich, who explained the installation was the first step in revitalising the National Sculpture Garden.
The sculpture was fabricated at specialist foundry UAP in Brisbane and altogether, took 60,000 working hours by 200 people.
It was trucked south to Canberra in a massive operation that lasted about a week.
But numbers like these - including the $14 million price tag - were not the reason Ouroboros was a great work of art, said Arts Minister Tony Burke.
"We have something that is brilliant because it was created by one of the finest artistic minds Australia has ever produced in Lindy Lee," he said, promising he'd been told the installation would last 500 years.
"It's one of those great facts that's going to be hard to verify ... so I can make that commitment and it's never going to bother me."
Lee is a leading Australian contemporary artist who has been working for more than four decades and has exhibited her work worldwide.
Sydney and Adelaide residents will already be familiar with her public sculpture, with smaller stainless steel works installed outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Ouroboros is free and open to the public.
It opens the same day as an exhibition of other work by the artist within the National Gallery of Australia, which runs until June 2025.
