Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Jord Lenzlinger bring together both found and made objects for their extravagant installations. The Water Hole, their most recent fairy-tale installation is on display in Melbourne’s Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

The artists have created this fantasied world and interactive wonderland as an adaptation of nature through synthesis.

Called The Water Hole, it begins as a winding, arched corridor. With its proverbial silver lining, the passage is himmering ca savern, an underground river decked in spacesuit material that rustles with the air currents of your movement.

The slithery texture is supported by sticks, but you can almost imagine that they’re the roots of heavy trees above. At the end of this quivering canal you come to a spooky rainforest with old plumbing and dangling debris — buckets and spiders, matted wire and drink bottles. Hanging items drop downward like stalactites.

You walk around the trashy plastic cave with a sense of awe, as if inspecting the natural marvels of speleology.