Our big silver landmark emerges from the fog (2024)

The quiet streets of the national triangle were filled with colour and movement, and it was only two o'clock.

Two in the morning, that is, a time when public servants are asleep.

And, among the figures was one dressed in her habitual black, but with her trademark topknot replaced by a beanie.

The $14 million work, the most expensive artwork commissioned in Australia, is now in the final stages of full realisation; it will soon light up the corner of the gallery's precinct, a beacon for visitors and a glowing landmark for the thousands of Canberrans who walk, run, ride or drive through the precinct every morning.

Since gallery director Nick Mitzevich first invited Lee, back in 2019, to create the most ambitious thing she could think of, she has worked with literally hundreds of people who have spent more than 60,000 hours on bringing her vision to life, mostly in a Brisbane foundry.

On its final journey here, Ouroboros - a snake eating its own tail, a symbol of the eternal cycle of life and death - has held up traffic, blocked off several lanes at a time and even required some signs to be moved and branches to be cut back.

It had travelled with a police escort through towns, closed down roads and just squeezed over bridges through Goondiwindi, Dubbo and towards the border to Canberra.

Lee herself was teary with emotion on Wednesday morning, as she reflected on the long and winding road from the start of the project to what is now, almost the end.

Her husband, Rob Scott-Mitchell, died two years ago, and she said he would have been so proud of how the work had taken shape.

She said she was "awestruck" by the skill of the team involved in bringing the work down to Canberra, where it was -6.3 degrees by the time it arrived.

"Every kind of cliche about truckies is totally wrong," she said.

"The worst part was idiot drivers."

National Gallery of Australia director Nick Mitzevich, who commissioned the work from Lee four years ago, didn't sleep last night, and travelled with the convoy from Eagle Hawk from 2am.

"This is the largest haulage to ever come into the CBD of Canberra," he said.

"There was a lot of manoevering and some extraordinary pilot work."

As the sun rose and one of Canberra's trademark winter fogs settled in, the capital's newest addition to the landscape was finally in place.

The work will remain wrapped in microfibre and netting while landscaping work around it is completed.

It's made of 13 tonnes of recycled and highly polished stainless steel, is just 1 centimetre thick, and has a 500-year lifespan.

Lee and her team hand-perforated the work with tens of thousands of holes, and at night, lights inside the work will shine through like constellations.

It will be officially unveiled on October 25,