Project for the River Medlock (1998)
Commissioned by Henry Moore Foundation and Tate Liverpool for Artranspennine98
Made in collaboration with Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson.




Project for the River Medlock was a permanent public art work commissioned for Artranspennine98
- the largest exhibition of public art ever shown in the UK.

The River Medlock was the river which Manchester was founded upon. In the years following the
building of the canal structures from 1785 onwards, the river became a site of neglect and even
embarrassment within the city. The road bridge which was the site for the work is situated at the
point where the river, railway and Oxford Road (the principal C.19th arterial road route from the
South of the city) intersect. The existing bridge parapet rose above eye level and occluded the
view of the river. An earlier mural, painted on the parapet, announced the name River Medlock,
alongside a design based around the red rose symbol of Lancashire. Yet the name read as loosed
from that which it signified.

The work inserted three toughened glass panels into the existing parapet - within the existing mural.
Three speakers amplified an audio recording of the source of the now-revealed river below. The
recordings were fixed on an automatic gain control which responded to the ambient noise level of
the city around it. A passing train or bus would automatically raise the volume of the river. The work
was a more permanent development of the concerns which had informed Mugger Music (which also
used the Medlock - though in that case as a 'score'). The various legal, logistic and lobbying
operations which went into realising Project for the River Medlock would in turn become the basis
for many of the concerns of Square City.