Art Gallery of Ontario installs “Couch Monster” by Fort St. John artist

Toronto’s most recent general public art piece is a massive bronze sculpture of a circus elephant, fashioned out of employed leather furniture.

The Artwork Gallery of Ontario disclosed its initially-ever public artwork commission, dubbed “Couch Monster” and explained as “a poetic tribute to the plight of creatures in captivity.”

It is the first huge-scale perform in bronze by contemporary B.C. artist Brian Jungen, who is regarded for reworking day to day objects into artwork such as plastic chairs he assembled into a whale skeleton.

The new sculpture is five-and-a-fifty percent metres very long and four metres tall and positioned in the vicinity of the museum entrance, in the former place for Henry Moore’s Massive Two Kinds (1966–1969).

The In the past suggests it will be accompanied by a descriptive panel written in Anishinaabemowin and English.

Jungen, of European and Dane-zaa heritage, suggests he was impressed by the story of Jumbo, a captive circus elephant killed in 1885 by a practice in St. Thomas, Ont.

The operate carries a Dane-zaa subtitle, “Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill,” which interprets to “my coronary heart is ripping.”

“Like the leather couches, the far more folks have interaction with the function, the a lot more the bronze patina will alter about time,” Jungen mentioned Monday in a launch.