By Yulia Tulegenova
Annabel McCourt has been chosen to make a permanent sculpture for Hull's waterfront. Her proposal, Resonant Tides (After the Strike), was selected from more than 70 applications to an open call, the commissioners announced on 7 October 2026.
The work will stand in the Fruit Market area, beside the Stage @TheDock amphitheatre, at the point where the River Hull meets the Humber estuary. No installation date has been given.
A gong taken apart
The starting point is the gong that opened every Rank Organisation film. J. Arthur Rank was born in Hull into a flour-milling family whose mill stood close to the River Hull, and went on to build one of the largest companies in British cinema. McCourt's design breaks the gong into nine large segments that rise from the platform as arcs, ribbons and fractured planes. According to the announcement, they are meant to suggest a tidal wave, a ship's prow or a ripple of sound caught in motion.
The title carries a second reference. Turn of the Tide, released in 1935 and set in a Yorkshire fishing community, was one of Rank's first productions.
The artist and the city
McCourt, who is from Grimsby, works in public art, installation, photography and film. Her Electric Fence was commissioned for Hull UK City of Culture 2017 and has since been shown abroad, including at the Dak'Art Biennale in Senegal.
"This commission feels like a real full-circle moment. Hull has been an important part of my career, from my early days at Hull Time Based Arts and working with the BBC, to Electric Fence for UK City of Culture 2017, my show at Humber Street Gallery and more recent work with Freedom Festival."
She added that she wants the sculpture to capture "the movement and change where the rivers meet".
Who is paying
The sculpture is privately funded. It has been commissioned by Wykeland Group, the regeneration company that developed the Fruit Market and owns the amphitheatre, together with the Brignall family and Wykeland's managing director, Dominic Gibbons. It will be dedicated to the company's founder, Dr Jack Brignall, and his wife Beryl.
That makes it a developer's commission on the developer's own ground, chosen through an open call. What the open call produced is a proposal tied closely to the place: a local family's mill, a film logo known across Britain, and a site where two rivers meet. Whether nine fragments of a gong can carry that much history is a question for the day it is unveiled.
