Spider sculpture, part ot Louise Bourgeois exhibition at the Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Louise Bourgeois' spider sculpture at the Heide Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Sebastian Costanzo

LOOKING like it crawled off the set of a sci-fi movie and into Heide Museum of Modern Art, the spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, dominates the gallery space.

The three-metre-high structure trembles back and forth as a workman on a ladder attaches the last of eight heavy steel legs. With a steel cage below it, the artwork weighs around two tonnes.

It beggars belief that Bourgeois, who died in 2010 at the age of 98, managed to create this sculpture with the aid of only a workman to weld it. What is more incredible is that this is a mere blip, a baby spider, compared to some of her work - including a spectacular nine-metre-high arachnid, Maman, 1999, created to fill the mammoth turbine hall of London's Tate Modern.

What the sculpture represents is not some horrific trauma, but the loving and protective qualities of Bourgeois' mother, who created tapestries, which the Paris-born artist compared to that of a spider weaving its web.

The Heide exhibition, featuring works from the last 15 years of Bourgeois' life, resulted from a long-standing connection between the artist and Australia. It was through an Australian - expatriate New York-based art dealer Max Hutchinson - that Bourgeois met Jerry Gorovoy, who went on to spend 30 years as her assistant and manager.

Gorovoy has travelled from New York to open the Heide show and has worked closely with the museum's director, Jason Smith, to bring it here.

Many of Bourgeois' other pieces on display at Heide are in her signature, so-called ''confessional'' style - a label she did not ascribe to her own work, instead seeing it as autobiographical, according to Gorovoy. ''[But] she always said that she was a woman who never had secrets,'' he said.

Louise Bourgeois: Late Works is at Heide Museum of Modern Art from November 24.