The usual instruction is: "Don't touch the sculpture" but the new installation at the Australian War Memorial has the opposite. Its very purpose is to be touched and felt and smoothed.
It consists of 18 marble spheres, each one flecked with natural blood-red stains.
They represent the droplets of tears and the blood that's flowed from Australia's servicemen and women over the decades. But it is also meant for the families who have also shed those torrents of tears.
"People are expected to engage with it. They're expected to touch it. They are expected to run their hands over it, to look at the blemishes in it. But, most importantly, they are expected to think," Matt Anderson, the director of the War Memorial, said.
He doesn't say people are expected to sit on them - but how can you stop people? And why not?
For Every Drop Shed in Anguish was created by Alex Seton. He found the marble in a quarry in Queensland. It's called Australian pearl marble because of its much sought after pearly white texture.
He wanted, though, the blemished variety that the makers of kitchen work-tops don't want. It was the blood red "blemish" which gave the memorial that extra poignant association.
He calls each sphere a marble droplet. "I chose the dewdrop form for its fragility and tension. Every droplet has a particular shape, defined by its delicate surface tension, as if about to burst. But most importantly, when touched, these forms reveal themselves to have an inner strength and resilience that I hope can provide a promise of hope and healing."
Whatever the artistic theory, the sculpture works for one person for whom it should work. Ben Farinazzo was a 25-year-old soldier who witnessed a massacre in East Timor. He has wrestled with it mentally ever since.
He approves of the sculpture: "These beautiful droplets of blood, sweat and tears really provide a place for veterans and their families to grieve, to reflect and remember and to hope and to heal," he said.
The sculpture's project manager and curator at the War Memorial, Anthea Gunn, said the artwork captured the complexities of suffering and of war.
"This is a different way of recognising the true cost of service," she said.
"Instead of a traditional heroic sculpture, this work is a contemporary abstract form that creates a place for people to engage through art with the lived experience of service."
Ben Farinazzo simply said: "It's a beautiful space."
