'Turning Point', Public Sculpture, The Mall, Armagh City.

‘Turning Point’, Armagh 2012.The Turning Point sculpture is a Bronze Public Sculpture, which was originally commissioned for St. Anne’s Square, Belfast in 1992. It was subsequently removed from it’s original site in 2000 and has now been refurbished and Installed on The Mall, in Armagh city, in March, 2012.The artwork takes the form of a 2.5m. diameter bronze Globe which is surrounded and supported by four figures, (2 male & 2 female), in the form of ‘negative life-casts’. It is possible for members of the public to look inside the globe through the eyeholes of each of these figurative casts. The positive aspects of the four figurative casts protrude into the interior of the sphere and these can be viewed within the interior space. The figures appear to dance or reach out to one another on the inside, while surrounded by a celestial star map of the northern hemisphere. This star map has been achieved by drilling different sized holes out of the top half of the globe, and the viewer sees pinholes of light mapping out the night sky above and around the figures.As the globe’s axis points to the North Star/Polaris the artwork is in fact a sundial, although not marked out as one specifically. Twenty-four evenly spaced longitude lines circle the globe mapping out each hour of the day as the sun passes overhead. Its location and angle on the edge of a step is designed to create a sense of insecurity. The exterior surface of the globe has been richly worked in high relief with images derived from a variety of toy soldiers, leaves, circuit boards, toy railway tracks etc.The work was removed from the former St. Anne’s Square in Belfast in 2000, during a redevelopment process, and was damaged in the process. The artist made a range of attempts to have the work repaired and relocated within the city of Belfast. Potential new locations were considered over the intervening years, these included: The Falls Park, The Waterworks and Sydnam Park. On each occasion the planned reinstallation of the artwork within Belfast failed.Eventually the Armagh Observatory suggested that the artwork be relocated to their property, but due to funding constraints it was decided that the work be sited on the Mall in Armagh. The work was gifted by Belfast City Council to Armagh and subsequently re-furbished by Willowview Foundry under the guidance of the artist. Turning Point was installed in its new location on the Mall in Armagh, in the Summer of 2012.