Argosy

Description:

Argosy, a new water sculpture by William Pye, occupies the courtyard in front of Lloyd's Register of Shipping at 71 Fenchurch Street, London EC3.

The water action of the sculpture adopts the Coanda principle where water clings to overhanging surfaces, moving downwards over the reflective surfaces in rollwave patterning, a feature that is familiar on many of Pye's recent works.

The shape is suggestive of a ship's hull and has been conceived to be seen and enjoyed from both below and above from the nearby building.
The mirror polished stainless steel form rises through a deck of variegated green marble cut and shaped to suggest the sea.

'Your mind is tossing on the ocean
There where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signors and rich burghers on the flood,
Or as it were the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers
That curtsey to them, do them reverence
As they fly by them with their woven wings.'
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice