This steel sculpture by notable South Australian sculptor Greg Johns has not always stood upon this site. Initially situated outside the Fisher building (demolished in 1997) on the lower level of the North Terrace campus, Dual was relocated to its current location in the Walter Young Garden in 1998.
Johns began work on Dual in 1978 during his final year of sculpture studies at the South Australian School of Art. Max Lyle, one of Johns’ lecturers and an important artistic influence, organised $200 to cover the cost of the steel.
It is the first of many works by Johns where the circle plays a central role. Dual resembles a split pin and is based on the philosophical concept of creating duality by breaking a circle. Its form is also said to have been influenced by the work of Henry Moore. Coincidentally, one of Moore’s works sits mere metres away, on the other side of the Walter Young Gardens.
Johns believed in art (sculpture, in particular) as a medium through which to express essential truths. Through his sculpture, he sought to create visual metaphors for his understanding of everything in the cosmos – from sub-atomic particles to cosmic galaxies – as interconnected and part of a whole.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Johns read widely across a breadth of ideas, from physics, geometry, mathematics and music to philosophy, cosmology, eastern mysticism and mythology. In 2001, Johns acquired a 400-acre property in Palmer (70 kilometres north-east of Adelaide) which he has converted into a sculpture park.
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