The Elephant in the Room

Sculpture design: Tim Vincent - Smith

Three enormous piano-wood elephant tusks topped with piano keys form a tall, thin, concave pyramid reaching 6 meters high into the air outside the Henry Moore Institute. Poised on a substructure of three solid, gold-painted, cast iron grand piano harps this playful and visually arresting sculpture makes a serious point about what our society considers to be waste. Old pianos often use ivory for the white keys and ebony for the black. They contain multiple and sometimes rare softwood and hardwood parts as well as metals; wound copper, cast iron, forged steel. So much care and craftsmanship and musicianship goes into a piano throughout its life and this sculpture is a transcendent celebration of all this often forgotten and discarded value.