Patrick Comerford
I was in Campbell Park in Milton Keynes twice in recent days, and was pleasantly surprised as I continued to come across more works of public sculpture that are placed across the city.
Campbell Park is the main park in the centre of Milton Keynes, and the venue for many open-air events. Close to the Rose, which was the venue for the Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at the weekend, the Labyrinth is one of the highest points in the park.
The swirls of the paved and grassy maze of the Labyrinth near Silbury Boulevard are surrounded by a substantial evergreen hedge. There are steps to the north and then paths and parkland to the south and east following the hill crest.
At the centre of the Labyrinth, the ‘Armillary Sphere’ is a working sundial or armillary designed by the sculptor Justin Tunley in 1995 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Milton Keynes Housing Association and the launch of its new name as Midsummer Housing.
The designer and artist Justin Tunley lives and works in Milton Keynes, where he has worked as a design consultant since the early 1990s. He studied at Teeside Polytechnic, Middlesborough (1983-1986), and the Royal College of Art, London (1986- 1988), and trained as an industrial designer. Much of his work is concerned with items for serial production and he has worked with other designers, architects, landscape architects, artists, sculptors and planners.
Justin Tunley’s brief in Campbell Park was to design something related to the Midsummer Housing logo of a sundial, and the result was his Armillary Sphere set into the Labyrinth. It is made in laser cut steel with stone carving. The date in Roman and Arab numerals ‘MCMXCV’ denotes the unveiling of this sculpture on Midsummer’s Day, 21 June 1995.
An armillary sphere is also known as a spherical astrolabe, armilla, or armil. It is a model of objects in the sky or the celestial sphere. It consists of a spherical framework of rings, centred on the Earth or the Sun, and it represent lines of celestial longitude and latitude and other astronomically important features, such as the ecliptic. With the Earth as centre an armillary sphere is known as Ptolemaic. With the Sun as centre, it is known as Copernican.
An armillary sphere differs from a celestial globe, which is a smooth sphere and whose principal purpose is to map the constellations. In an armillary sphere, a central ‘gnomon’ or shadow caster runs through the centre of the sphere, parallel to the axis of the earth. The gnomon casts a vertical shadow over the inside face of the planetary ring running around it. As the earth rotates, the relative positions of the sun, gnomon and planetary ring change, moving the shadow in a clockwise direction.
Justin Tunley’s ‘Armillary Sphere’ in Campbell Park is a fully functional sundial. His distinctive series of vertical and angled cuts around the planetary ring represent Roman numerals. Those on the lower face represent Greenwich Mean Time and those on the upper face represent British Summer Time. The large holes running along the centre of the band mark the hours, the smaller holes represent 10 minute intervals.
The concept of an armillary sphere was invented separately in ancient China, possibly as early as the 4th century BCE, and in classical Greece in the 3rd century BCE, with later uses in the Islamic world and mediaeval Europe. An armillary sphere also features on the national flag of Portugal.
So, this sculpture, in its own way links sculpture and science, and the new city of Milton Keynes with the discoveries of ancient China and classical Greece, and the Labyrinth of Knossos with the Portuguese explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries.
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