This is what it looks like when whales fly.

On March 12, Canberra, a city known for its hot air balloons, marked 100 years as the capital of Australia. To celebrate, the Centenary of Canberra commissioned artist Patricia Piccinini to create the Skywhale, a huge airborne mammal facsimile that is now touring Australia.

"The Skywhale is a sculpture much more than it is a hot air balloon," Piccinini says. "When we look up at the Skywhale and wonder what it is 'for,' it might remind us that nature is not necessarily 'for us.' It just 'is,' and we’re just lucky enough to be around to see it."

Piccinini compares the idea of the Skywhale to the blue whale's evolutionary journey. If a mammal could evolve back to the sea, why not to the air?

"The thing about nature is its extraordinary capacity to find ways to adapt to any environment," she says. "There is no place on earth without life, and that life will be perfectly adapted to that place. There is no creature that I might think of that will be as extraordinary or unlikely as a real one living somewhere."

Piccinini modeled the whale in CAD, which allowed her to view it from different angles, especially below, as spectators see it. (Piccinini herself rode in the basket.) Then she brought in Cameron Balloons, which printed the colors on 3,535 square meters of fabric.

The Skywhale isn't just a whale-shaped balloon; it was constructed specially to allow the unique shape, and Piccinini added fantastical features, blending the shape of the face with a humanlike, matronly quality. Its look has been polarizing, perhaps in part because of the uncanny, not quite human expression. Or because of the mammaries.

"I imagine perhaps the Skywhale secretes some sort of lighter-than-air gas in them when she isn't feeding her young," says Piccinini. "But that's just a theory..."

All Photos: Martin Ollman, Sean Davey, Mark Chew, and Ian Mackenzie, courtesy ACT Government.