A statue of King Kong by Nicholas Monro was commissioned in 1972 for display in Manzoni Gardens in The Bull Ring, in the centre of Birmingham, England. It was later displayed elsewhere in Birmingham, then at markets in Edinburgh, Penrith (where it was subsequently stored), at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and now in the owner's garden in Cumbria. The Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol owned a maquette of the statue which is now in the collection of Wolverhampton Art Gallery. History Birmingham Modelled on the fictional giant gorilla King Kong, the -tall, fibreglass statue was commissioned for display in Birmingham from March to November 1972, by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation for the Sculpture for Public Places Scheme "City Sculpture", in partnership with the Arts Council of Great Britain. It was constructed at the artist's studio at Hungerford. Monro's brief was to make something "city orientated" and he chose King Kong because of his association with New York City and "for my own petty reasons". The statue was displayed in Manzoni Gardens (previously the site of Birmingham Market Hall; now subsumed beneath the Bullring shopping mall). On 14 July 1972 it was "occupied" by two flying pickets, who were protesting about low wages in the building industry as part of the national builders' strike. They sat on its shoulders and hung from its neck a banner reading "King Kong says nothing less than £30 for 35 hours and up your T.P.I." After the statue had been on display for four months, Birmingham City Council was offered the opportunity to purchase the work at a reduced rate of £2,000, but decided not to retain it, and so in September 1972, it was sold for £3,000 to a local used-car dealer, Mike Shanley, who changed the name of his dealership to King Kong Car Co. and displayed the statue at his sales lot on the A34 Stratford Road, next to the former Holy Trinity church in the Camp Hill area of the city. While there, it was dressed up as Father Christmas in season, and it also survived a fire in June 1974. During 1975 it was loaned to Birmingham School of Architecture, between 30 June and 3 July, as a symbol for the 'City of the Future' symposium which took part at the Gosta Green campus. By 1976, the statue had moved to a new location on Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook, close