Echo

Title of artwork: Echo

Artist: Neil Dawson

Date: 2021 (previous iterations: 1981; 1991)

Category of work: sculpture

Media: carbon fibre tubing, stainless steel wire

Where you can see it: suspended above the North Quad

Thanks to: Lady Barbara Stewart and the artist

Artist Neil Dawson created the original Echo in 1981 as a temporary sculpture. It was his first public artwork and has proved an enduring favourite.

Dawson had agreed with former Arts Centre General Manager Brett Riley to create a site-specific piece, so inspired by its surroundings, the work ‘echoes’ The Arts Centre’s Gothic Revival architecture. Dawson had worked as custodian on site and knew the buildings (and their inhabitants) well.

Nine months after installation, the sculpture was accidentally damaged by a crane and subsequently removed.

Due to its popularity, Echo was rebuilt and permanently installed in 1991. Twenty years on, that iteration was destroyed in the 2011 Canterbury earthquake.

Dawson calls Echo a “sky drawing”. Its playful nature is designed to be unexpected and stop people from walking with their heads down and to make them look at the sky.

The piece relies on traditional perspective drawing, which enables the form of the work to change as viewers move beneath it. Depending on the viewer’s position, it can look like a series of lines or a solid object. The carbon fibre tubular structure is 3 metres high and suspended by thin stainless-steel wires 6 metres above the centre of the North Quad.

Now reinstated for a third time, Echo has become a source of fascination for a new generation and an inspiration for countless selfies.