Neil Dawson

Dawson's sculpture Fanfare was first suspended from the Sydney Harbour Bridge to welcome the 2005 year. The sculpture is made up of 350 reflective pinwheels arranged in a sphere. Sydney's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, subsequently presented the sculpture to the Christchurch City Council as a gift. After a long time in storage, it was eventually decided to install Fanfare next to State Highway 1, just south of the Waimakariri River Bridge to welcome visitors coming to the city from the north. Fanfare was officially unveiled on 10 June 2015 by mayor Lianne Dalziel and Dawson. Dalziel, with reference to Fanfare's first installation in Sydney and to the destructive Christchurch earthquakes, said at the ceremony:

In February 2014, Dawson's Spires was installed in Christchurch's Latimer Square. The work was inspired by Dawson's attempts to draw from memory the demolished spire of ChristChurch Cathedral. It was initially planned that the sculpture would hover over the centre of Latimer Square, along the axis of Worcester Street, so that a visual connection with ChristChurch Cathedral would be achieved. However, its current placement is in the southern half of Latimer Square, not far from the Cardboard Cathedral. A structural engineer had approached Dawson in 2012 to enquire whether he wanted to design another sculpture for Christchurch, and when he agreed, she donated her time to undertake the structural design for the installation.

In 1990, Dawson was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal. He received the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Arts Laureate Award in 2003, and in the 2004 New Year Honours he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to sculpture.

Since the late 1980s, Dawson has worked as a full-time sculptor out of the former Oddfellows' Hall in Linwood.

Dawson attended the University of Canterbury (1966–1969) where he studied under Russ Williams, Tom Taylor and Eric Doudney. He gained a Diploma of Fine Arts (Hons) and then spent a year at teachers' college. This was followed, with the help of a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant, by a Graduate Diploma in Sculpture from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, in 1973. On his return, Dawson drove a truck for four years, and taught drawing and design at Christchurch Polytechnic from 1975 to 1983.

Francis Neil Dawson CNZM (born 6 November 1948) is a New Zealand sculptor, best known for his large-scale civic pieces crafted from aluminium and stainless steel, often made using a lattice of natural forms which between them form a geometric whole.

Dawson was born in Christchurch in 1948. The son of Methodist minister John Brent Dawson and his wife Florence Emily (née Carlisle), he grew up in Masterton, Petone, and Hastings, and received his secondary education at Hastings Boys' High School.