Ai Weiwei lays 500 iron helmets on Sydney harbour in call for peace

Five hundred cast-iron combat helmets now sit in ten straight rows on Sydney's harbour edge.

The work is titled 'Mushrooms', by artist Ai Weiwei. It was unveiled on 25 September outside the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney as the 2026 Neil Balnaves Tallawoladah Lawn Commission, a work ordered specially for the site MCA Australia.

It stretches 40 metres. You can walk through it.

The installation stands on the museum's lawn on the harbour front in Circular Quay, and will remain on view for seven months The Art Newspaper. The Australian Financial Review describes it as a walk-through installation and the second of three annual sculpture commissions for the lawn.

Ai Weiwei said the idea began when Germany offered 5,000 helmets to aid Ukraine before Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022. That offer, of protective gear rather than weapons, became the starting point for 500 heavy iron forms laid out like a field.

The title carries three meanings, according to the artist's statement. 'Mushrooms' refers to growth in darkness, to nuclear mushroom clouds, and in Chinese suggests endless delays.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney presents the unveiling as "a call for peace". In its statement, the museum said the presentation of hundreds of combat helmets becomes a collective symbol of endurance and survival.

The commission is named after Australian philanthropist and businessman Neil Balnaves. He was 77 when he died in a boating accident near Tahiti in 2022. The first work in the series was 'Ancient Feelings' by Thomas J. Price, a three-metre-high golden bronze sculpture of a woman's head.

For visitors, this means a harbour-side walk with a wartime object underfoot. The helmets are uniform and still. The harbour moves behind them.