Ocean Financial Centre, Singapore, 2014

Jane Cowie in association with Art-2 Gallery, was commissioned by Keppel Land in 2011 to create a public artwork at the Ocean Financial Centre, Raffles Place CBD. Working with cast lead-crystal glass, stainless steel and marble composite materials, Cowie created an artwork illustrating the closely connected Singaporean multicultural society within which she now lives and works.

The school of fish metaphor connects her ideas about culture and community, collaboration and consensus, as fundamental aspects for our survival as the human collective. Acknowledging that cultural ideas, symbols and practices are transmitted via writing, images, speech, gestures, ritual and by copying, the internet allows us to share and communicate our ideas to a much broader international community.

Positive feedback and the spread of information through larger and more diverse groups means disparate individuals are making similar choices concurrently. Moving together like a school of fish, the global community ultimately becomes one entity which is much greater than the sum of its parts.