A widely travelled sculpture
In 1968 the sculptor Henry Moore, an ardent collector of driftwood, stones, and plants, received an elephant’s skull as a gift from friends. He was very excited by the skull’s cavities and curves, which were later reflected in his huge bronze sculpture Double Oval.
In his early years Moore worked with stone and wood, his method being a process of retrieving a form from a given material, instead of using a material such as clay, which could be remodelled to create a work of art. As Moore aged his sculptures continued to grow in size, making it necessary to find a new material that would be better suited to his creative process.
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Address Connaught Place, Central, just opposite the General Post Office | Public Transport MTR stations Hong Kong and Central, only some minutes from Central Piers and Two IFC. | Tip On nearby Exchange Place you can see another work by Henry Moore, the “Oval with Points.”
The Berlin-based art foundry Noack, with which Moore worked closely, produced the Double Oval and cast it in bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. For the Double Oval many individually cast parts were welded together to form the final sculpture, with all the seams painstakingly beaten out from the inside. It was always vital to Moore to obtain the right graduation from light to dark on the surface; his works should be dark at the bottom and brighter towards the sun, where they should beam and shine. The sculptures’ special patina was achieved through a secret process developed by Noack.
Even the locations of the sculptures were not chosen at random. For Moore, architecture and sculpture had to complement each other. He frequently took pictures of smaller models of his works, arranged in such a way that it was possible to visualise the final work’s effect in a designated location. Only when Moore was satisfied with the interaction of the sculpture and its surroundings was the object then scaled up to its proposed dimensions. However, the Double Oval, which was originally located in front of the main entrance of Jardine House, Connaught Place (the former Connaught Centre), was later relocated to its current position.
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