Mick Doohan NSR500 explosion

Mick Doohan is the world's third most successful GP racer with five world championships to his name - Rossi has seven, Agostini has eight - and his exploits have been celebrated in a most artistic manner with a stunning sculpture entitled "The Big Bang".

Australian artist Eamon O'Toole is exhibiting several pieces at the Ipswitch Art Gallery in Queensland as part of his Revhead: The Motorsport Art of Eamon O'Toole retrospective, including the stunning Mick Doohan piece, which exposes the legendary Honda NSR500 as it's never been seen before - suspended from the ceiling in thousands of tiny pieces.

The work is made from around 300 separate pieces and took more than 600 hours to complete.

"It is a complex sculpture comprising thousands of parts joining to make up a whole and [is a] symbolic tribute to the true inherent nature of art and sport – the creativity of design, where the mechanical is modified to suit the needs of man," explained O'Toole.

The various parts of the spherical motorcycle explosion that is 'The Big Bang' are made mainly from heat-moulded plastics, which have been arrayed on a complex loom of hanging wires.

"The way the Doohan piece came about was that one of the bikes Mick rode had an engine configuration called the Big Bang. I wanted to make something that put Mick into that arena of something special and that nothing truly existed until he came along. I wanted him to be immortalised to some extent and that was the best way I could do that.

"That’s why it is an exploded three-dimensional drawing of Mick and the Bike," he said.

O'Toole also created a piece based on Wayne Gardner's Honda NSR500 GP bike (pictured), but this is one has not been exploded. It was made with a metal frame, plastic panels so that the owner of the piece can sit on it.

Revhead: The Motorsport Art of Eamon O'Toole is showing at the Ipswitch Art Gallery in Queensland until May 6, 2012.