The Self-playing Instrument of Water is a collaborative artwork by award-winning poet Alice Oswald, renowned designer Harry Pearce of Pentagram and specialist fabricators Millimetre. The poem draws on the area’s historical relationship with water, exploring the transformative properties of water and the deceptive simplicity of the water cycle and is physically embedded into the landscape of the Kew Bridge West development.
The Self-playing Instrument of Water is one of the commissions identified by Futurecity in the cultural strategy for Kew Bridge West. Futurecity’s strategy proposed a series of embedded artworks that would interpret, commemorate and enhance the significance of Kew Bridge in the history of Britain’s water supply. Big Table is also located on the Kew Bridge West development.
