British artist Alex Chinneck has designed a six-meter-high looped canal boat on the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal in England, as a “playful distortion of the familiar.” The 13-meter-long sculpture, which appears to float, celebrates the canal’s heritage and serves as a free-to-visit artwork. Chinneck’s aim was to highlight the canal’s history in a fun and modern way.
Alex Chinneck created the looped canal boat as part of his series of surreal public artworks that explore fluidity in typically rigid forms. Speaking to Dezeen, he described the 200-year-old Sheffield & Tinsley Canal as an “under-celebrated gem” and aimed to encourage people to explore its charm. The canal boat, designed to fit its surroundings, offers a playful twist on something familiar while celebrating the canal’s industrial heritage with a modern, positive touch.
The sculpture, placed near Sheffield Ikea between locks four and five of the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal, was designed to be surreal and playful. Visitors can view it from the towpath or boats. The boat’s main structure, made from eight tonnes of steel, honors Sheffield’s steelworking history, while the looped upper section is crafted from rolled aluminum.
“The canal was once surrounded by brick factories and chimneys that were key to Sheffield’s steel industry,” Chinneck explained. “So, it made sense to create an artwork that pushed the boundaries of steel in an ambitious and extreme way.”
The installation on the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal was built in prefabricated sections, transported along the canal, and assembled on-site on a frame anchored to the canal bed. It was painted to resemble local canal boats, featuring a Tudor Rose as a nod to Sheffield, and named The Industry, after the first boat to navigate the canal in 1819.
The canal location added complexity to the project, with sections needing to pass through locks and under bridges, requiring the water level to be lowered.
“Working in a canal system brought challenges we hadn’t faced before,” Chinneck said. “With no vehicle access, we transported the two sections by canal.”
The pieces traveled two miles from Rotherham to Sheffield, passing through eight locks and under eight bridges, including the M1. Once at the site, the steel hull was floated into position and then flooded to set it in place.
The aluminum loop was transported via a specialized hopper, and it’s thought to be the tallest structure to navigate the canal in the last 70 years. To fit the loop, over a mile of the canal was lowered by up to 70 centimeters, leaving just enough clearance between the loop and the lowest rail bridge.
“Using the canal for transport and assembly was challenging and added cost, but it definitely added charm,” Chinneck noted.
The loop-the-loop canal boat is Chinneck’s latest surreal installation in Tinsley. His previous works include zippers on buildings in Milan and London, an upside-down house in London, and a slumped facade in Margate.
Photography by Marc Wilmot.
