A classic mid-century roadside motel in Las Vegas has been turned into a fantastically colorful habitat for a series of huge animals, constructed from waste collected from dumpsters, abandoned factories and scrap yards.

This 10,000-square-foot zoo parody (dubbed ‘Wild Wild Waste’) by artist Bordalo II is his biggest installation to date. It’s designed to make statements about the commodification of animal habitats as well as human waste production and management activities.

“Bordalo is inspired by the rejected, the broken, the wasted, somehow our everyday,” explains the exhibit’s curator. “With the trash we refuse to be responsible for he creates a fantastic installation that is playful and, furthermore that question our relation to waste and our responsibility.”

The animals are simultaneously visible as a whole and a set of parts. A flock of penguins emerges from plastic cubes, car parts morph into a family of pandas, while a whale caught in a fishing net and lion caged in a truck further highlight ideas of confinement.

“We were so humbled to have the opportunity to help host the art of bordalo at life is beautiful this past weekend,” said one of the organizers. “The entire installation’s emotional nature gave us all a little lesson in doing more with less in our work and in our environment.”

A curious curatorial decision marked the inaugural National Gallery of Victoria Triennel, featuring 100 artists from 32 countries, including an installation of 100 massive skulls (note: not those of the participating artists).

Amidst other artists, designers, technologists, animators and architects, Australian sculptor Ron Mueck’s largest ever work to date still stands out, providing a chilling ambient atmosphere for more conventional museum pieces.

Titled Mass, it represents “a somber study of mortality, and an extension of [the artist’s] hyperrealistic sculptural practice, [drawing] from the biological structure of the skull, regarded by him as extraordinary facets of humanity.”

Made of fiberglass and resin, the skulls are around three feet (or: one meter) tall, but many are piled up on top of one another, reaching toward gallery ceilings above.

This exhibition in Melbourne is free and open to the public and will continue through late April — images by Tom Ross and Sean Fennessey.

Known for his work on large-scale art projects, including the world’s biggest interior art installation, artist’s latest piece features over 1,000,000 square feet (100,000 square meters) of shimmering yellow fabric, wrapped around floating docks that span for miles up to and across Lake Iseo in Italy.

Undulating with the waves, the Floating Piers project lets visitors walk between Sulzano, Monte Isola and to the island of San Paolo; the floating platforms are visible from surrounding mountains as well.

Christo conceived of the idea with his Jeanne-Claude as far back as the 1970s, exploring different potential venues for its installation. While Jeanne-Claude passed away in 2009, Christo has carried on the idea, and finally found a place for the temporary work in Northern Italy.

Many works by this long-standing pair of ambitious artists were self-funded, in part through the sales of concept drawings and models in advance.

“like all of our projects,” says Christo, “The Floating Piers absolutely free and accessible 24 hours a day, weather permitting. There are no tickets, no openings, no reservations and no owners. The Floating Piers are an extension of the street and belong to everyone.” The project opened this weekend and will run for just 16 days. Images by Wolfgang Volz.

Wind and rain conspired to set loose a gigantic inflatable piece of installation art, turning it into a kind of impromptu performance piece for drivers and bystanders as one (very big) red balloon rolled by. In some regards, the resulting viral sensation has taken on a life of its own, extending the reach of the sculpture far beyond its target audience.

Designed to be a source of urban interaction, the RedBall was in the process of being wedged between two downtown businesses before being redirected by forces of nature. Museum staff, installation participants and a handful of bystanders chased the recently-liberated sphere down the streets, eventually catching, deflating and returning it to the installation site. Instagram user jeremy419 happened to catch much of the action from atop a nearby building. Meanwhile, a hacked version of video puts a fresh tomato-style spin on this unexpectedly interactive work of  art.

The museum’s director of communications, Kelly Garrow, recapped the sequence of events for reporters: “It started pouring rain, so the ball was wet and slippery. The wind picked up, and it popped up and just started going. You can see in the video that’s going viral that it rolled about halfway down a block and then mysteriously took a left-hand turn. It made its way partially down the street before people caught up with it.“

Despite its size (15 feet in diameter), the ball weighs only 250 pounds, minimizing its potential for damage to one bent street sign – quite tame compared to rounded corporate art sculpture set loose in Fight Club as part of Project Mayhem.

A world-traveling artwork, the ball was created by Kurt Perschke to be pressed into tight spaces and has been in play for nearly a decade without incident. Meanwhile, add this escapee to Nena’s 99 Luftballons lyrics and you get a nice rounded “100 red balloons go by.”

Modified inline skates holding pots of black pigment allow this artist to create her huge works (up to 40 feet or more) while rolling around the room, with results that look remarkably like smaller-scale works of hand-drawn calligraphy.

A student at the California College of art, Tian Haisu has dubbed her approach Landskating. She notes that her “whole body is involved” in this unusual process, filling her creations with a unique kind of “power, speed and rhythm.”

Her works feature landscapes, plants and architecture, all created by pressing down on giant unrolled sheets of paper deployed after she has sketched out and thought through these larger compositions on small sheets.

As with any artistic approach, it took the artist time to learn the medium, executing with her feet rather than her hands in a way that both liberates the creative process but also involves complexities and stylistic impacts that are not always easy to predict or control.