Looping Boat artwork a permanent installation on the Sheffield and Tinsley canal


The Looping Boat is a major new installation by renowned British artist Alex Chinneck that celebrates the history of Tinsley, Sheffield’s historic waterways and the city’s industrial heritage. The piece takes the form of a 13metre-long canal boat, painted in traditional colours and named The Industry after the first vessel to navigate the canal after its opening in 1819. It behaves in an extraordinary, magical way – performing a six-metre high, gravity-defying loop-the-loop.
The artwork is part of the Tinsley Art Project which was launched back in 2016 when Chinneck was commissioned by stakeholders including Sheffield City Council, the Canal & River Trust and Tinsley Forum. It was the biggest ever public art commission for Sheffield. “My studio and I started work on and developing ideas for the Tinsley Art Project eight years ago,” says Chinneck. “One particular focus was always to create an artwork along the canal system, engaging with Sheffield’s industrial past, with the added benefit of encouraging outdoor recreation. We wanted to do something in Tinsley to excite the local community.”
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The first artwork that Chinneck and his team produced for the Tinsley Art Project was The Peeling Road installation. It was in place for a week in September 2017 on Sheffield Road in Tinsley and the sculpture featured a peeling section of road with a car hanging upside down from it. “We put it right next to the M1 viaduct on a quiet piece of road and installed it overnight as a surprise,” says Chinneck. “Five thousand people came to see that; it was a tremendous success. We invited every class from Tinsley Primary Academy and they loved it. There was a real ‘wow and how’ factor. The children were wowed by the theatrical ambition of the piece and curious about how we did it. So that was really successful and it also did a good job of introducing us and our work and the whole concept of public art.” Chinneck’s creations are a collaborative process – to make The Peeling Road he worked with carpenters, tarmac-layers, road-painters structural engineers, steel benders, scenic artists and metal workers.
A few years later Chinneck and his studio installed one of their knotted pillar post boxes which have popped up at various locations around the country. The series was known collectively as Alphabetti Spaghetti; Chinneck explains the background to their creation. “I was aware that so many of our public artworks were commissions and I wanted to create a series of sculptures that we would own and could be installed anywhere,” he says. “We made three knotted post boxes – one in Margate, one in London and another in Tinsley. The way my work operates is that it is starting from a platform of familiarity and then weaving a bit of fantasy and playfulness into it.”
Chinneck’s works, which range from the small-scale to the monumental, are certainly eye-catching. Installations he has created over recent years include a twisted red telephone box entitled Wring Ring, a knotted fire extinguisher called Fire in the Jelly and a building in Covent Garden which looked as though it was floating in the air called Take my Lightning but Don't Steal my Thunder (2014). A Pound of Flesh for 50p was a house made from 7,500 paraffin wax bricks that slowly melted, and his 2013 project in Margate, From The Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes, created the illusion that the whole façade of a house had slid into the front garden. “This is no criticism at all of museums or gallery spaces but I think there is something with public art when it is introduced and discovered in a place you wouldn’t expect to find it that kind of makes a unique contribution to the surrounding landscape that is hopefully positive,” says Chinneck. “When I created our sliding house in Cliftonville near Margate it was really where you wouldn’t expect to find it, and that strengthens the surprise.”
Placing an artwork in the public realm requires a lot of planning – there are permissions to obtain, surveys to carry out and logistics to consider. Creating and installing The Looping Boat, which involved collaborating with structural engineers, specialist steel fabricators, waterway contractors, professional painters and traditional canal boat sign writers, was one of Chinneck’s most complex and challenging projects so far. “With these kinds of artworks – they are ambitious, technically challenging and administratively complicated and this was my first artwork on water which adds a massive layer of technical complexity,” he says. “The facilitation and the fabrication were both quite complicated. The design process took about six months and included structural and aquatic engineering and then it took around eight months to build.”
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Getting The Looping Boat into position was tricky too – the bottom section was floated to its location and the arch floated on a specialist pontoon. It got stuck in one of the locks so they had to revise how to transport it which involved dropping the water level. “That was one of the most stressful days of my career,” says Chinneck, laughing. “The artwork is the tallest thing to navigate the canal for 70 years, so there were lots of unknowns.” Once it was in place, groups of local school children were invited to visit. “We got such a warm, positive response from them – I really love those moments, that’s what makes it all worthwhile. Some of them remembered the Peeling Road and the knotted post box and they seemed really excited about the boat – it is ambitious but conceptually accessible. Accessibility is a big consideration in all my work, and playfulness and warmth. That lends the artworks an endearing quality that is not pretentious.”
His says that location and setting often provide the inspiration for his projects.
“I am excited by a location and my response to it – and the opportunity to make something. That is how I have operated for a long time. Initially we were finding the locations ourselves, were not invited, it was a real process of self-facilitation. Then as we started to be invited and commissioned, I began to enjoy the fact that the context was always changing and that different places forced me to take on different materials. A lot of my work is illusory but if it feels like it fits into its location, there is a heightened believability.”
That ‘heightened believability’ is what he and his team were aiming for with The Looping Boat. “Ultimately, we were trying to create something that worked with the context and resonated with the history of the place but that also felt like a positive, contemporary way to encourage people to discover or rediscover the canal.”
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The Looping Boat, a free, year-round outdoor visitor attraction, is a permanent installation on the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal. Visitors can enjoy a 180-degree view of the boat from the towpath, but cannot enter it as it is situated on the offside of the canal. For more details visit canalrivertrust.org.uk/theloopingboat