Henry Moore OM, CH

Locking Piece is made up of two large interconnecting forms stacked one on top of the other. It is one of Henry Moore’s best known public sculptures and has been on display near Tate Britain in Riverside Walk Gardens, Millbank, since 1968, having been gifted to Tate by the artist a year earlier. Tate’s work was the third of three bronze casts of this sculpture produced between 1964 and 1967, and was originally the artist’s copy.

The two large pieces that comprise the bulk of Locking Piece are formed of amorphous protrusions that connect individual parts of the sculpture together or project into space at various angles, although the overall shape is quite compact. A hollow space at the centre of the sculpture is created where the upper piece arches over the concave piece below (fig.1). At one end a third, flatter, disk-like piece is wedged between the facing edges of the two larger pieces like cartilage between two bones. Here, both the upper and lower projections are short, tubular and have straight edges on one side. The lower form also has an irregular surface that slopes at a diagonal, causing the disk-like piece to rest unevenly upon it. The form projecting from the upper piece arches up and over the hollow space into a second, thinner protrusion with a curved face and tall, broad sides. This form projects almost horizontally to overhang the lower piece (fig.2).

At the other end of the sculpture a thin spur from the upper piece appears to hook into a crevice in the lower piece. This cavity is formed by a rounded, twisting mass crossing the outer edge of the sculpture at a diagonal angle and a thin, faceted wedge that rises up from the base (fig.3). From one side, in between the bulkier forms joined by the disk at one end and the interlocking spurs at the other, is a tall, narrow, vertical gorge created by the curvature of the upper and lower pieces.