Point Omega

HEIGHT 4FT PAINTED STEEL WITH STAINLESS STEEL BALL 1994

The title of this sculpture comes from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's ideas about a 'final state'.

I started by wanting to use the magic of the Logarithmic Spiral, found in so many of the wonders of nature, to express the process of the widening perception that happens in all our lives as we grow older, but also to include the broadening horizons of scientific knowledge that now plays such an important part in all our lives. The 'shining sphere' in the middle of the spiral, is one's own Self Realisation, the Delphi Temple's, 'Know Yourself'.

I wanted to limit Man's part in this expansion, as Milton did, when he wrote, 'one foot he centred and the other turned, round through the vast profundity obscure, and said, "thus far extend, thus far thy bounds"'. In other words, there is a limit, the Universe is not infinite, there is an end. So I end the spiral in a circle, the Chinese symbol for Heaven. Although we ourselves are part of a continuous process, through our genes, we also are finite, so our concerns must come back to our own centre, Point Omega.

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