Sculpture background

The stainless steel of this sculpture seems to glow with an inner light. The magnified Braille text suggests a message, but the artist chooses to deny us access, raising issues of communication in the contemporary world, and the difficult interface between the disabled and the rest of the community.

"Invisible City is an appropriate public work because it functions on several levels: Aesthetics – even without understanding that the dots on the two boxes are braille text, Invisible City is an aesthetically pleasing object – it doesn’t have to be read to be appreciated. Tactile – it is made to be touched. Surface – Invisible City is polished stainless steel, and reflects its surroundings. When looking at it you see a reflection of Wellington."

Anton Parsons

Parson and Peter Beatson, a university lecturer and writer who is blind. Inscribed in Braille on the sculpture is Beatson's poem, Invisible City. This is an epitaph for the death of his guide dog and an insight into the navigational difficulties blind people can encounter when their sonic charts are destroyed by the wind.

Listen to a reading of Invisible City

The word made flesh can bleed.
Am I bound or freed?
Embracing visual silence
alone
I breed a virtual skin of signs
across the void
but when the fault line ruptures
the word made flesh will bleed.
By the unseen quay
I plant this graven seed
betrayed by the wind
my sonic charts destroyed
tethered sign to skin
I am both bound and freed.