Saint
Andrew, Fisher of Men
A sculpture for the Minster Church of St. Andrew, Plymouth.
This exciting commission was for a sculpture on the pillars (which stand 91" high) on the boundary of the public open space in front of St. Andrew's Minster, at the entrance to the thoroughfare that links the city with the church.
My
idea was for a figure of St. Andrew throwing a casting net across the
pillars and so forming an arch. There was the potential for a great deal
of rhythm and movement within the work, and as one moves around it,
every changing aspect should reinforce the sense of a net being thrown. 
In
Christian terms, the net is cast across all those people passing beneath
it, reflecting St. Andrew’s role as a “fisher of men”, involving people
consciously or unconsciously in its symbolism, and therefore reflecting
the redemptive significance of the Christian presence. Where the front
and back edges of the net cross, the lines formed suggest both the
Christian fish symbol and the saltire (the St. Andrew's cross). .
It therefore prefigures St. Andrew’s martyrdom.
Immediately behind the pillars, the single word resurgam (I will rise again) is inscribed in stone above the north door of the Minster. It marks the position of a board, bearing the same word, which was placed there during the war shortly after the church was bombed; a moving expression of the hope, both Christian and temporal that church and city would rise again from the devastation inflicted by the blitz. It is my hope that the rise of the net at the summit of its arch will be suggestive of that concept, which would also widen the sculpture’s meaning for a broader public. Similarly, St. Andrew, as a fisherman, has a general significance in representing the historic and contemporary importance of Plymouth as a fishing port.
When I made my original site visit, I went into
the new town opposite the church as well as to the older parts in order
to try to get a feeling for the city as a whole, and was struck by the
similarities and differences both actually and historically with Harlow
New Town, built within 5 miles of my Much Hadham home just after the
war, to house evacuees from the blitz in London. The big difference is
that in Harlow, the new and old towns are quite separate because there
was little local bombing and the new town was built on a green-field
site. In Plymouth, one of the interesting things is the
interrelation of the two - the merchant's house set amongst modern
buildings; the memorial of the bombed out church on the roundabout; and
the totally different aspect looking away from St. Andrew's into the
town from looking away from the town towards St. Andrew's. It occurred
to me that an arch across the pillars would be a significant way of
relating the different aspects of the city and accentuating the
importance of continuing history. An arch both divides and joins; it is
always both a crossing place and a meeting point. Visually, as one
stands at the pillars it lies between the old and the new, with their
different but related histories, as well as between the specifically
Christian and the more general communities. Combined with the fishing
element, I believe that gives the sculpture a
relevance which is very specific to a city that in a quite
extraordinary sense combines the contemporary with its own history.