I’d just like to point out that the cover image is from Lake Ballard, in Western Australia. The art installation is called “Inside Australia”.
I went there in 2006. You need to find your way to Kalgoorlie (a gold-mining town that has a frontier-to-the-northern-desert feeling), and travel 130 km north to Menzies. At Menzies (population 235), you turn left onto a dirt road and travel another 50 km.
Lake Ballard is an ephemeral salt lake - sometimes it’s a shallow lake, sometimes it’s a salt bed. I got there on a salt bed day.
The humanoid sculptures on the lake are about chest-height on me, and scattered around the lakebed. You’ll need to walk for a few hours to see them all, and it’s well worth it.
This was the first time I really understood the difference between “sculpture” and “installation”. These sculptures would’ve been intriguing in a gallery. But after a long bumpy drive followed by abrupt silence as you stop and switch off the engine, then a walk for several miles over silent empty salt flats, encountering them in small groups, or one-by-one, it’s the kind of art that changed me a little.
[edited for grammar and flow]
Some pics from the time:
