Australia
Lake Ballard
Fifty-one Antony Gormley sculptures stand alone on a salt lake beneath the Milky Way.
Fifty-one figures stand motionless on a salt lake. Cast in iron alloy from body scans of Menzies residents, Antony Gormley's Inside Australia installation spreads across the white crust like sentries posted at the edge of meaning. At night, the Milky Way fills the spaces between them.
Lake Ballard is a salt lake in the Western Australian Goldfields, 50 kilometres northwest of the former gold-mining town of Menzies. British sculptor Antony Gormley created Inside Australia for the 2003 Perth International Arts Festival — 51 sculptures cast from body scans of 51 Menzies residents, their forms elongated and abstracted, placed across the lake at calculated intervals. The installation was intended to be temporary but was donated and made permanent. The effect is cumulative — walking between the figures on the salt crust, each one catching light differently, each one standing in a silence so complete that your own breathing becomes the loudest sound.
Solo
Walking alone among iron figures on a salt lake under the Milky Way — Lake Ballard is a solo art experience that requires nothing but presence.
Couple
Fifty-one figures, two of you, and a galaxy overhead — Lake Ballard turns a salt lake into an open-air cathedral for two.
- Fifty-one Antony Gormley sculptures stand scattered across a salt lake — cast from body scans of Menzies locals.
- At dawn, the sculptures emerge from the lake mist like sentinels — at night, the Milky Way fills the gaps.
- The installation was commissioned for the 50th Perth International Arts Festival and left permanently.
- You walk alone between the figures on a crunching salt crust with nothing else in any direction.
Menzies pub — the last cold beer before the sculptures and the silence.
Pack a picnic and eat at the lake's edge at dusk as the figures become silhouettes against the sunset.
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