Invited to create riverside public art atop London’s massive new Super Sewer, Turner Prize-shortlisted Nathan Coley butted against a rules-based world at odds with his own – but creative differences have borne fruit
‘Yeah, I became a pain in the arse,’ chuckles Turner Prize-shortlisted artist Nathan Coley. For nine years, Coley has been at the heart of a new 4,000m2 public space on the River Thames at Blackfriars – acting both as agitator and collaborator among architects, engineers, councillors and client.
Works are almost complete, and five vertical concrete sculptures punctuate the elongated riverside site. All but one fold to traverse the ground, creating areas for sitting or stages for performing.
Water cascades down the central piece, which, buckled and grooved, stands in a recessed pool. Hoarding still conceals much of the area, so I have to squint from across the river and peer down over Blackfriars Bridge.
Two of the sculptures sit flush against the new river wall and even drop down into it, as if they’ve slipped. From the south side, they appear like dark rectangles which, as I walk, animate and disrupt the opulent facades behind. At certain angles, they jostle up against the Shard, Tate Modern and St Paul’s Cathedral – and hold their own.
Part of the colossal £4.5bn Super Sewer project by Tideway to update London’s overstretched sewer system, Bazalgette Embankment at Blackfriars is one of the largest sites created to cover, access and ventilate the new subterranean infrastructure.
Sculptures conceal sewer engineering triumph
Hawkins\Brown was tasked with transforming these pockets into meaningful public realm: connecting users to the water, responding to the locale and commissioning artwork for each location. Coley was invited to interview for the opportunity and was interested by the chance to work with other professions over a long period and for the art, design and landscaping to develop together.
The sculptures, between 4m and 9m high, mark the otherwise silent, unseen engineering triumph beneath. Yet they actively don’t narrate it. ‘I made a conscious decision early on that the work wasn’t going to be about the history of the site… there’s a place for that, but it’s not what I’m interested in as an artist,’ asserts Coley.
Instead, the pieces are abstract objects that invite use and have evolved from their immediate context.
Coley isn’t a stranger to architecture. He’s well versed in the history and politics of public space – ‘I’m the king of all that kind of stuff’ – and his practice explores said spaces and structures, and how people relate to and articulate through them.
Works are often sited in the public realm, whether illuminated text on scaffolding, a poured concrete bandstand or a camouflaged church. His studio includes a trained architect and sits above wood, metal and ceramics workshops.
The team of three design, draw, 3D model and oversee construction, and are better-placed than most artist studios to join an architectural and engineering project. Yet, as Coley admits, Bazalgette Embankment’s scale was unprecedented.
‘Architecture is a profession with rules about designing and billing and time and structure. And I’ve created this rather eccentric world where none of those things are fixed,’ he muses. ‘If we’re really collaborating, then what are the boundaries and what are the rules?’
Changing the conversation on Bazalgette Embankment
As outsiders, studio members were not versed in the quiet conventions and expected approaches, and found themselves repeatedly in meeting rooms, around a circular table, with team leaders presenting and juniors quietly typing behind laptops. This might have made a wallflower out of meeker characters, but it intrigued and galvanised Coley.
‘I got frustrated that I was looking at the world in a way which became a set of problems,’ he recalls, ‘so I introduced Ban the Plan’. This was a set of workshops Coley chaired that prohibited a bird’s-eye view of the site. ‘There’s a great shot from the south of the river of how the sculptures fit with each other, in relation to the buildings behind and river in front,’ he says. ‘We don’t learn that by looking down at or being on the site.’
Coley set the agenda and hosted the meetings on neutral ground, at neither the architect’s nor engineer’s office. He also made a point of asking junior team members what they thought. ‘I would always say, what do you think? You drew it. We came up with the idea and did a bit of a sketch, but you drew it into the BIM model.’ Apparently the meetings aroused curiosity among younger architects at Hawkins\Brown, and they started dropping by.
Throughout the project, Coley tried to tease apart patterns of operating, inviting others to dip their toes into his world. Partly this was to create opportunities and space for the unexpected, partly to explain and defend his ideas, and partly – I’m certain – because of a sense of mischief.
In Coley’s Glasgow studio, I run my hand over a material sample for the sculptures. Black basalt and quartz aggregate flecks and mottles the limestone concrete, creating a rough texture and seductive glimmer. The beautiful and rigorous detailing seems to have hung on small moments of persuasion and personal appeals.
Coley recounts endless interactions with engineers that began with ‘Could we?’, ‘Why not?’, ‘Are you sure?’ or ‘Can you find a way?’. He says: ‘I like to think I can look people in the eye and say, I know you work for this big multinational company, but can you and I do this together?’
Often, this evoked excitement and new possibilities. The concrete was cast deeper than originally thought possible, and tighter tolerances were accommodated so a groove in a sculpture exactly aligned with the river wall handrail.
Other times, it was less effective. The studio wanted a sculpture to cross the site line and migrate onto the street, but planning permission won’t budge. ‘Rarely do you get everything you want – and maybe quite rightly,’ concedes Coley.
He grins cheekily when recalling the back and forth with engineers, yet selects his words carefully at key conceptual points. He’s serious about creativity and the strange moments that interest him.
Daydreaming, romance and catching ideas come up in conversation, but it’s evident Coley is also spatially and ergonomically minded. Describing the site, he uses whatever’s to hand – water bottles, models, his cup of tea, my phone – to communicate how the sculptures relate to each other, their context and users.
The studio has come away with a real admiration for architects and recognises how difficult it is to hold onto ideas over such a long period and while they pass through so many hands. The project has made Coley more aware of how he works and likely made others more cognisant of how they work too.
Bazalgette Embankment opens later in 2025 and is certainly an advert for artist and architect involvement in large-scale projects. What could have just been the land on top of some pipes is a generous, integrated and exciting offer to the city.
It must have taken bravery by Tideway and Hawkins\Brown to invite in a provocateur and allow themselves to be challenged by Coley. They could very easily have held an artist at arm’s length and dropped pre-made sculpture into pre-decided spaces.
Instead, it seems, a place well worth visiting, looking at and spending time has emerged from the collaboration and the friction.