LONG before Selen Nazmiye Bilal ever saw a Sturt's desert pea in real life, she’d already begun designing plans for a sculpture inspired by the mysterious Outback flower.

“The sculptures I make seem to have this way of predicting where I’m going to end up before I get there,” she said.

At the time, Bilal was living in Wollongong and had designed numerous sculptural installations for fest...