17 May 2025
The Industry is a major new public artwork for Sheffield by Alex Chinneck.
The sculpture celebrates Sheffield’s historic waterways and industrial heritage. It takes the form of a full-size canal boat, whose body behaves in an extraordinary way, performing a six metre-high, gravity-defying, loop-the-loop.
Fabricated from 9 tonnes of helically-rolled steel and aluminium and painted in traditional canal boat colours, the looping boat bears the name ‘The Industry’, after the first vessel to navigate the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal when it opened in 1819.
The waterway was used to transport sections of the artwork to site, travelling two miles from Rotherham to Tinsley. The loop of the sculpture is the tallest known structure to have been transported along the canal in the last 70 years, leaving only centimetres to spare between the artwork and bridges.
The Industry is permanently located between locks 4 and 5 of the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal.
Music by Cosmo Sheldrake.
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May 22, 2025
Art
Design
Kate Mothes
Photos by Charles Emerson. All images courtesy of Alex Chinneck Studio
Alex Chinneck reimagines a Georgian townhouse facade into a playful portal for Clerkenwell Design Week 2025.
t takes a real knack for design to make something as hefty and industrial as steel and bricks appear weightless or even playful. But British artist Alex Chinneck (previously) is no stranger to monumental projects that reimagine urban infrastructure and buildings into striking public installations.
As part of London’s Clerkenwell Design Week, Chinneck unveiled “A week at the knees,” a new sculpture in Charterhouse Square that takes its cue from an iconic predecessor. The artist installed the “From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes” in 2013 on a dilapidated townhouse in Margate, appearing as though the entire front of the building had simply slid right off. On view through June in London, his new work boasts a frame made from 320 meters of repurposed steel and 7,000 bricks.
“A week at the knees” playfully anthropomorphizes a classic Georgian facade, with its lower two levels rippling over a pathway as if seated in the park with its knees up. London is famous for its green squares and gardens, and Chinneck’s work invites visitors to pass through a unique portal that calls upon the history of its surroundings, complete with downspout and lamps flanking the arched front door. […]
Source: A Rippling Townhouse Facade by Alex Chinneck Takes a Seat in a London Square
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