But draw closer to the latest addition to the National Gallery's Sculpture Garden and your tranquil summer afternoon may well take on a darker cast.

A monumental new work by English artist Tracey Emin has taken its place amid the wattle and banksia, visible from the lakeside.

Entitled When I Sleep, the monumental four-metre bronze is a reclined human figure that looks, up close, to be in a state of pain or torture.

The gallery's curator of international art and sculpture Lucina Ward said the work's title gave more than a hint as to the artist's main preoccupation in many of her works.

"This idea of sleep, or lack of sleep, is extraordinarily consistent throughout her work," she said.

The gallery acquired the 1.5 tonne piece in 2021 for a reported $643,000, the culmination of a mission to own at least one major work by one of Britain's most internationally celebrated artists.

Now that it's part of the gallery's 700+ international art collection, the Emin acquisition puts the gallery in line with other Australian institutions in owning a piece of modern art history in the making.

A perennial enfant terrible in the art scene, Emin is probably best known for her 1999 Turner Prize-nominated installation My Bed - her own unmade dirty bed in which she had spent weeks drinking, smoking, eating, drinking and having sex while undergoing emotional trauma. The work featured, infamously, used condoms and blood-stained underwear.

But this was more than two decades ago, and Dr Ward said Emin's progression as an artist over the years has ensured her place in the modern art world.

Dr Ward said When I Sleep had been part of a 2019 exhibition, in which Emin made her first foray into monumental sculpture, after being better known for painting, neon and installation work.

"In international art, we collect somewhat differently to Australian art, so we don't collect as comprehensively as the Australian art curators," she said.

"We want our works to represent major moments in art history. And in this particular case, I found the business of Emin somewhat unexpectedly working in a very traditional medium really very intriguing.

"We like to not plan as if we're going to have a single work, but we have to accept that we might. So partly, we become really interested in When I Sleep because of the role that sculpture has within this [NGA] collection."

It will soon be joined by another major sculptural work, Ouroboros by Australian artist Lindy Lee, a commission that, at $14 million, will be the gallery's most expensive work to date.

It was also revealed recently that due to operating costs in its 40-year-old building, the gallery would have a potential $265 million shortfall over the next 10 years (the gallery's collection development acquisition budget is entirely separate to its operational and capital budgets).

On a brighter note, the gallery has also revealed that two of its most recent major exhibitions - Jeffrey Smart and the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony - had contributed $33 million to the Canberra economy in 2022.

Its current summer blockbuster, a retrospective of the work of Australian artist Cressida Campbell, was also drawing in steady crowds this week.

Ms Ward said she hoped visitors would be intrigued, to say the least, by Emin's work, which was the only such piece in Australia.

While other Australian galleries had examples of Emin's neon works, it had made sense to look to other mediums in acquiring her work.

"When we saw these works, they had just such impact, taking her practice in a really different way," she said.

"We could have gone for a painting, but the business of how important sculpture and the role of sculpture in this collection - it seemed a wonderful way of updating the garden."

When I sleep lies close to The Dog, by Rick Amor, Antony Gormley's Angel of the North, Auguste Rodin's nudes, and Emile Bourdelle's Penelope, who, Dr Ward says, "waits for a long time and does not sleep - we liked this idea that it's almost a counterpoint".