Spiral & Pergola
A new public artwork designed by Kate Maddison and created by Chrysalis Arts in collaboration with artisan wood specialist Ben Chester using regionally sourced oak and larch. It was commissioned by Aldi for their Public Realm Space at their store on Topcliffe Road, Sowerby near Thirsk.
A new public artwork designed by Kate Maddison and created by Chrysalis Arts in collaboration with artisan wood specialist Ben Chester using regionally sourced oak and larch. It was commissioned by Aldi for their Public Realm Space at their store on Topcliffe Road, Sowerby near Thirsk.
Spiral represents a fragment of time moving forward in its cyclical passage to the future. The eight metre long flowing sculpture is made of eighty two oak slabs laid side by side. Standing vertically at each end, they twist horizontally at the centre where a lowered section forms a platform. Spirals are a fundamental form in nature from the motion of our universe to the molecular shape of our DNA. The passage of time is displayed in the spiralling growth of a snail’s shell and preserved in geologic time in ammonite fossils. If you could draw in three-dimensional space and were to plot Sowerby at its location on earth with the point of a celestial pen, then it would trace spirals in an onward spiral motion.
Spiral – Light -Time. The earth rotates on its axis, creating the notion of day and night time with light and dark. The earth orbits the sun marking each year with the rise and fall of the sun’s arc in the sky and the cycle of four seasons. Light years are used for celestial measurement. Our view of the universe from earth is looking back in time. The sun’s light illuminates earth each day and is reflected on into the future, therefore we simultaneously observe the past, are in the present and make the future.
Pergola has a geometric roof that rises and falls, echoing Spiral’s wave motion and is placed over a circular ground finish, aligned with Spiral. It frames the Aldi Public Realm Space, a social meeting point and marks the new Cycle and Pedestrian path like the portal effect of a group of trees, a traditional way to mark a route.
Spiral – Light -Time. The earth rotates on its axis, creating the notion of day and night time with light and dark. The earth orbits the sun marking each year with the rise and fall of the sun’s arc in the sky and the cycle of four seasons. Light years are used for celestial measurement. Our view of the universe from earth is looking back in time. The sun’s light illuminates earth each day and is reflected on into the future, therefore we simultaneously observe the past, are in the present and make the future.
Pergola has a geometric roof that rises and falls, echoing Spiral’s wave motion and is placed over a circular ground finish, aligned with Spiral. It frames the Aldi Public Realm Space, a social meeting point and marks the new Cycle and Pedestrian path like the portal effect of a group of trees, a traditional way to mark a route.
