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Bomber Command Flybuy
Raindrops
Manchester, UK
Vanishing Stairs, detail |
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Neil Dawson
2003 Laureate
Sculptor
Neil Dawson has established
an international reputation for his innovative sculpture.
Born in Christchurch in 1948, Neil holds
a Diploma of Fine Arts (Hons) from Canterbury University and a Graduate
Diploma in Sculpture from Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.
Since his earliest installation in 1979 for the Robert McDougall Art
Gallery, Seascape, he has gone on to compile an impressive portfolio
of works held both in New Zealand and overseas.
Neil's career, to date, has focused on the production
of large-scale, and site-specific, sculptures in New Zealand, Australia
and Asia. He is best known for his suspended sculptures, the first
of which was Echo in 1981. In 1989, he created his first suspended
sphere, Globe, for the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the
Pompidou Centre in Paris. Neil went on to use the basic form of the
suspended sphere in several more works, most notably Ferns,
installed in Wellington's Civic Square in 1998 as one of his now five suspended
sculptures in the capital. He was also commissioned by the Olympic
Co-ordination Authority to produce an artwork for the 2000 Olympic Games
in Sydney, the result of which was Feathers and Skies, situated
above the main entrance to Stadium Australia. In his hometown of Christchurch
he is perhaps best known for Chalice, an 18m-high conical structure
installed in Cathedral Square in 2001.
Neil describes his work as "an obsession, like
it is for the majority of artists," adding that he "continue[s]
to be excited by new projects." In the 1998 catalogue for Ferns,
Jim and Mary Barr say his work offers a "multiplicity of views
that people can create for themselves as they move beneath or around
his sculptures," emphasising that while "Dawson has used
the interplay of the constant and the serendipitous in many of his
works, in the spheres the combination has proved inspiring."
In 2005 and 2006 Neil completed his first major outdoor works in the United Kingdom with the installation of Raindrops and Wellsphere in Manchester.
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