Local artist Dallas Collins was commissioned by Barratt Homes to create a unique sculpture for the new housing development on the site of the former Downend Lower School. A model of his design, Ocular Gate, can be seen here.
Dallas Collins talks about his sclputure, Ocular Gate
I heard a saying once that ‘the future is only the past viewed again’, I believe this runs true as only by living the past are we able to appreciate the future. The sculpture I have created has taken a long time to come to fruition, not from the perspective of actually manufacturing it but from the thought processes that have brought me to this moment in time. We forget we live in a society that has taken thousands of years to create and a system that now moves so fast that we are unable to even think or ponder our position within it.
Ocular Gate has been created by this process of pondering and the luxury of being able to play and discover. The wealth of local history that lies hidden can only be found by looking at the things that surrounds us and by discovering a past that lives with us all.
Thursday the 19th June 2008. While I was cycling to work through the centre of Cardiff I received a phone call from Lesley Greene (art coordinator for the project) telling me that the sculpture I had submitted for selection had been chosen as the sculpture for Barratts Homes of Bristol and their new Page Court development nr Mangotsfield. I can remember letting out a yell and punching the air! this was one of those days that you know will always stay with you; I could see people looking at me only after I had finished talking. My first thought was to ring my wife Julie and my children to tell them the good news, my next thought was hell, I’ve got to make this object! A strange thing happened after I finished my calls. I had a call from the Black Isle Bronze foundry in Inverness asking me if I was still interested in having them cast my work .They told me that they were coming to Bristol to dismantle a sculpture for renovation in a few days time and could I let them know if I was successful with the bid as they would be able to pick up the maquette for enlargement and casting. I had four days left in which to produce a working scaled 1/8th model for them... after lots of phone calls, texts, emails, mixing plaster and sweat I was at a point where I was able to deliver the work. Some of the other strange facts whilst researching the work were that the school ‘Page school for girls’ that used to be on the original site for the sculpture was the same school my wife went to when she was a girl back in the 1970’s and her mother Joan my mother in law attended when it was new in the mid 1930’s. I think sometimes these things happen for a reason.
Part of my project was to involve the local community in the sculpture project. I was fortunate to have the kind help of all the Downend library staff who supplied me and my colleague Clara Collings (no relation) with lashings of tea, biscuits and help in producing a workshop space for the local community. We had over 200 people participate in the project over five days producing small originals of Ocular Gate out of porcelain clay; we also had 60 children from Downend School who will be asked by Barratts to bury their own artworks near the sculpture in the spring of this year as part of the official unveiling of the sculpture.
I feel that I’m at a point in my career as a sculptor where I can appreciate what a privilege it is to have the opportunity to leave a sculpture in the world that will outlast my lifetime and possibly that of my own children. Ocular Gate is an analogy for time, of things that have gone before and things that may yet be discovered. I believe the further down the path of life we look, the further forward all of us will be able to see.