00:00A new addition to Liverpool's waterfront is inviting people to stop, take a closer look
00:06and perhaps let their imaginations wander. The latest winner of the Liverpool Sculpture
00:11Prize has now been unveiled with artist Patrick Rogers' work Scali taking its place on the
00:16plinth at St Nicholas Church. Scali is my attempt to kind of see the new folklore into Liverpool's
00:21mythology. It's a take on a mermaid or a mere person. The city is completely filled with mermaids,
00:29very much tied to a kind of empire and a time of Liverpool's history that's complicated.
00:36The Liverpool Sculpture Prize is managed by the Liverpool Big Company and Liverpool Parish Church.
00:41Each year a new work is selected and installed on the plinth at St Nick's Church. According to
00:46organizers the competition is open to any sculptor working in the United Kingdom and is one of the
00:51last remaining open annual sculpture prizes in the country. The sculpture is inspired by mythical
00:57sea creatures drawing on themes of mermaids and folklore. It becomes the newest artwork to occupy
01:04a location that's become a recognized showcase for contemporary artists.
01:10Scali really is about representing something for people who feel maybe from the city but not of the
01:16city or people who feel a little bit on the edges of things. Something that's tied closer to the river
01:21and
01:21closer to the stories of people on the ground. Alongside the opportunity to exhibit their work
01:26in such a prominent public setting, the winning artist receives a prize of £2,500. The successful
01:34entry is chosen by a judging panel that includes the director of Liverpool, Father Philip Anderson.
01:39I'm sure that Scali is going to really provoke a lot of, well actually joy, I think. Liverpool's got a
01:48great
01:48tradition of public sculpture from the Epstein-Liverpool resurgence outside Lewis's and maybe in more
01:54recent times the Superland Banana. She became sort of icon of the city and again with that spirit like
02:01playfulness. And I think that people will take to Scali in a similar way. Scali now takes its place in
02:08a
02:08highly visible waterfront location surrounded by tourists, office workers, residents and visitors
02:13throughout the next 12 months. The whole idea was kind of thinking, trying to reimagine a
02:18and like a new icon for the city a little bit, not as a replacement for the liver beds in
02:22any way,
02:24but something sympathetic to what already exists. For the next year, Scali will become
02:30part of the daily backdrop of city life, continuing the prize's aim of bringing public art to one of
02:35Liverpool's best known spaces. So that fish out of water is kind of like key and and and
02:41Liverpool as a culture I think is is built on that, you know, although we've we've been ordered a lot
02:46as a culture as a community by nationally over for a long time and you know we embrace that and
02:52that
02:52makes us our identity of who we are as a community and and Scali hopefully can kind of just reinforce
02:57some
02:57better understand our leadership.
02:58That's it.
02:58So
02:58I
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