One week to first installation of Slow Melt

This rock emerged from the mould like a giant frozen heart. It takes 24 hours to make and much less than that to melt. Freezing, demoulding and transporting the ice rocks without letting them begin their melting starts to feel like a crazy metaphor for the effort to combat global warming - a frantic race against time and temperature.

We install all 26 for the first time in one week. With the help of Maurice Toscano's astronomical knowledge and his Uranametria, we marked out our sky disc using the positions of stars right on the roof of the Southern Celestial sphere, in other words what you would see if you could look straight up from the South Pole and outwards about 10 degrees from the centre.

We have also had fabulous help and company from Sam Fairlamb who has been documenting the making process - watch this space for his beautiful short film.

We are indebted to John Hand, from the Hospitality Department of Melbourne Polytechnic (formerly NMIT) for providing essential access to walk in freezers and excellent advice.

Finally Stuart Purves at Australian Galleries and his team of builders currently tranforming the Stock Rooms space into a new iconic destination, have been amazingly supportive, donating time, materials and indispensible expertise to the project.

Our thanks to everyone thus far, and now the marathon begins to produce and install 572 rocks over 22 days!!!