SKALLI: Notes Upon an Estuary Entity — Book Launch
This September, MAT MAT Publishing will release SKALLI: Notes Upon an Estuary Entity, a new publication exploring the strange and fragmentary folklore of the Skalli.
The book will be officially launched on Thursday 24 September at Nettle Café, Port Sunlight, marking the beginning of a much larger exploration of the folklore, mythology and material culture surrounding the Skalli.
A folklore of the estuary
Neither entirely fish nor entirely human, the Skalli is a creature of thresholds: mudflats, marshes, river crossings and those uncertain places where land becomes water.
Material Matters artist Patric Rogers has been developing the mythology of the Skalli following the appearance of the monumental SKALLI sculpture in Liverpool in 2026. For Notes Upon an Estuary Entity, Rogers has collaborated with fellow Into the Wyld contributors, author John Reppion and artist Camille Smithwick, to begin giving this emerging folklore a history of its own.
Drawing upon antiquarian studies, natural history, local legend, oral tradition and sailors' accounts, the book gathers together sightings, beliefs, customs, illustrations and fragments of supposed evidence. Genuine histories and landscapes of the Mersey and Dee become entangled with imagined folklore, creating a mythology that seems to have been hiding within the estuary all along.
The beginning of The Skalli Society
The publication of Notes Upon an Estuary Entity is not intended to be the conclusion of the Skalli story. It is the first in a developing series of projects by Patric Rogers dedicated to furthering, documenting and complicating the folklore and mythology surrounding the creature.
These future works will now be brought together under a newly formed title: The Skalli Society.
Part archive, part artistic project and part imagined folkloric institution, The Skalli Society will become the home for the continued collection and preservation of Skalli related material stories, objects, images, sightings, local traditions and new interpretations of the creature as well as a home for exploring new and emerging mythologies firmly rooted in ‘place’.
Book launch
SKALLI: Notes Upon an Estuary Entity will be launched at Nettle Café, Port Sunlight, on Thursday 24 September 2026, with copies of the publication available on the evening.
Tickets and Pre orders to follow
Further details about the launch, the publication and the first projects of The Skalli Society will be revealed over the coming weeks.
SKALLI: NOTES UPON AN ESTUARY ENTITY
Published by MAT MAT Publishing
Featuring work by Patric Rogers, John Reppion and Camille Smithwick
7Pm Thursday 24 September 2026
Nettle Café, Port Sunlight