Maelstrom

Co-exhibitors:

Bedwyr Williams, Kate Gater, Estelle Woolley.

Cotterrell's new permanent public installation, Maelstrom, launched 27.10.2017 in Chester, UK alongside new works by Bedwyr Williams, Kate Gater and Estelle Woolley.

King Charles Tower, on the city walls, hosts Chester’s first artwork that acknowledges the city’s emerging relationship with water, as a whirlpool appears and disappears in the Shropshire Union Canal, rapidly turning to create an illusion of extreme depth and speed. Taking inspiration from the maelstrom, whirlpools and eddies that feature in literature from The Odyssey to Jules Verne, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. Cotterrell's new work seeks to represent the magnificence of these awe-inspiring natural phenomena, recreating them on this gentle stretch of Chester’s waterways. This intriguing artwork encourages alternate viewpoints of the city that rewards curiosity and creates a sense of wonder and surprise.

How and why the whirlpool has appeared is intended to cause intrigue and provoke curiosity from the public visiting the canal with the intention that it draws attention to the waterway, its geography and environment. Working with Cotterrell, pupils at local schools have imagined their own myths and stories of how the whirlpools came into being. A selection of artworks by Year 6 pupils at Hoole CE Primary School and Waverton Community Primary School were also exhibited at King Charles Tower for the launch event which took place on 27.10.2017 and during the October half term.

The artwork is part of the recent improvements at King Charles Tower Gardens, a refurbishment that transformed a once derelict part of Chester; and forms part of Chester’s Waterways Strategy which aims to reconnect Chester’s Waterways to the city.

westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/maelstrom/