DNA

Outside M&S, Gallagher Retail Park. Funded by Dundee Partnership and Dundee City Centre Regeneration Group, organised by Dundee City Council. Made of Brushed polished stainless steel tube. Paint in the colours of the code. Info from artist: “The brief asked for a connection to Dundee's history or to present day activities. Stem cell research, which was of global interest, was being carried out at Ninewells Hospital and the University of Dundee. This became my inspiration for a contemporary sculpture in the new retail park, formerly an industrial area. The site was in front of a glass-fronted building that had previously housed a foundry. The curving lines of the DNA molecule - two chains that coil around each other to form a double helix - and the colour-coding allocated to it by researchers, were the basis of my sculpture. To include the bars (or bonds) in the DNA code in the main part of the sculpture was not advisable as people could possibly climb on them, so I designed the DNA spiral to be bolted down at base to a heavy plate and to be held by two mechanical hands at the apex ('Your life in our hands' idea).”