Horizon is a beautiful structure, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim installed at Scotia Creek near Boston, which was installed in June 2021.
In the 1600s, a small congregation of separatists (known as the ‘Scooby Congregation’) decided to flee the UK and head to Holland.
They met at Scotia Creek in 1607, but on the night they were due to leave for Holland they were betrayed, captured and imprisoned in Boston Guildhall. A year later the Pilgrims succeeded in their escape to Holland, before eventually sailing from Plymouth in September 1620, landing on 9 November at Cape Cod in New England.
The metal viewing platform allows visitors to look out to the Wash and beyond, at an important spot in the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims and their voyage to New England in the 1600s.
The joint project between Transported, Boston Borough Council and Lincolnshire County Council was part of a series of projects in the Boston area commemorating the Mayflower’s 400th anniversary.
The new structure incorporates an elevated 5m metal deck with a balustrade containing features depicting the navigational journey in the Mayflower’s history, and the stars in the night sky used to get there.
A digital impression of the sculpture
The deck is level with the top of the new bank profile, and accessed from it. The design considers themes of navigation relating to migration, flight and exploration of unknown worlds.
The platform provides shelter and has seating that can be altered by visitors to give views back to Boston, as well as out to sea.
Artists Mathew Springett and Rhys Cannon were commissioned to create a piece that is inspired by the town’s maritime history.
Inspired by the significance of its site, this structure explores themes of nautical navigation by allowing the visitor to imagine journeys into the unknown and beyond the horizon. In 1607 a group who later became known as the Pilgrims attempted to leave from a place nearby,
leading to one of many transatlantic journeys and a complex,
challenging history.
Always changing and infinitely complex, the structure references navigational instruments and methods used by maritime travellers for millennia. Along with meteorological, solar and astronomical readings, the main destinations of the Pilgrims’ subsequent journeys are traced through
time from their first point of departure.
This is an ever-changing meeting place to sit, shelter and interact with other people, the landscape and the history of the site. Looking back to Boston and out to The Wash, beyond the horizon, the structure represents an abstracted composite of historic navigational instruments. Part sextant, part sun-compass, part orrery, it can be reconfigured and curated by visitors to alter seating positions in relation to views, shelter and shadows.
Set within a circular platform, the seating and structures form a destination that is never the same and echoes the expectation of departure for a journey to the unknown. In doing so, it encourages repeated and numerous visits. Rotatable seating and foils interact with a scribed, stationary
deck and wind vane referencing timeless tools of navigation in an interplay of form and shadow. We conceived the installation as being created principally from treated, painted metal in a colour that is both subtle yet
intriguing within the landscape.
The artwork taking shape in the studio
The artwork taking shape in the studio
