Water – mercurial, formless, transparent, always changing yet always the same – has a powerful effect on body and soul. In past centuries water has had an all-important powerful symbolic, religious and secular role to play. Countless myths and legends are based around water – the lady of the lake, the sirens and mermaids to name just a few. The traditions of the sacred font, the purifying spring, water as the source of creation have pervaded the rites of many cultures.

The ‘elevating’, symbolic role of water began to be eroded during the industrial revolution when the status of water changed. No longer the symbolic purifier water was relegated to functional service, hidden away in the drains, pipes and sewers of bathrooms, kitchens and industry. Public perception shifted as the functions of hygiene and engineering overshadowed its symbolic power to sanctify and purify the spirit.

Contemporary fountains attempt to display water in playful or soothing ways. In Sydney, where the climate could well benefit from more sensitive use of water in urban contexts we have a few ‘classic’ fountains. There is a great opportunity to work with water in imaginative sculptural ways, to help restore to water a sense of wonder, to reveal its ability to facilitate empathy, a vehicle for our imagination and our dreams.

The forecourt of St Mary’s Cathedral presents the opportunity to revel in the use of water in subtle ways to create a sacred sense of its imaginative powers. The notion of the font or the well where water disappears mysteriously but is perpetually recycling in soothing but intriguing ways is particularly appealing. To complement and to contrast the nearby Cook and Philip park reflection pools & water garden and Hyde Park’s effervescent Archibald Fountain this water artwork is conceived as a site for the ‘spirit of water’ connecting it implicitly to the cathedral and to a general notion of spiritual contemplation.