A giant nine-metre high, 20-metre wide installation of Skywalker Gibbon by Lisa Roet has been installed on the roof of Carriageworks as part of this year’s Sydney Contemporary. From 5-8 September, visitors will see the ape sculpture atop the building’s entrance. This is the first time Roet’s creation has been shown in Australia.
The sculpture is part of the dynamic Installation Contemporary program curated by Talia Linz, Senior Curator at Artspace. Made of solar-sensitive inflatable material, the work has been hand painted by Melbourne-based artist Roet to depict a Skywalker gibbon, an endangered primate discovered in 2017 and normally found in the forests of Myanmar and China. It was named “Skywalker” because of its tendency to move swiftly through the treetops, not dissimilar to the movement of a Jedi, a reference to the Star Wars saga.