BirminghamDwell has eyes on the art work that captivated a metropolis, and he is mendacity on his massive again in a storage facility up north.
05:34, 03 Apr 2026
King Kong is at the moment in storage in Sheffield(Image: Marcus Hawley)
Reader, we have found Bullring King Kong… and we hear he desires to come home.
The wayward ape, enormous and with massive human arms, dallies someplace between terrifying and fantastic, relying on who you are asking.
The Nicholas Monro-designed sculpture was all the time polarising and that may properly be why we’re nonetheless speaking about him as we speak, some 54 years after he popped up for just a few quick months in Bull Ring’s Manzoni Gardens in 1972.
Read extra: Birmingham needs King Kong more than ever – in memory of our long-lost Bull Ring love
And why later he was reimagined, making world headlines as he stood sentinel at a pop-up Jewellery Quarter park for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
That first iteration lives throughout the backyard of the household who owned him after Birmingham selected not to buy him post-Bull Ring stint.
As we perceive it, after visits to Edinburgh, Leeds and Cumbria, the OG King Kong now resides with the individuals who cherished him sufficient to spend money on retaining him. Last we heard, they did not need to half with him.
The second model, nonetheless, was seemingly misplaced. But we have now positioned that massive boy – and found out how much it’s going to value to bring him home.
Where is King Kong now?
When the Commonwealth Games set up was over, King Kong was photographed in temporary storage at a demolition yard, sparking worries about its future.
After that, so far as anybody we have spoken to knew, he disappeared fully.
The actuality was, in accordance to Marcus Hawley, former managing director at Cordia Blackswan which commissioned it to be constructed within the first place, that he was taken in for safekeeping.
Marcus says that when he left Cordia Blackswan, he took the sculpture with him.
Sitting down to chat with us in a restaurant, he explains why he did not need to depart with out King Kong.
He begins by explaining why he commissioned it within the first place
“Nick Monro was a proper child of the 60s, a punk, he never gave in, and never sold out. When the cigarette company gave him the brief, they wanted the sculpture to be city orientated. He made it disorientated. What’s more disorientating than when King Kong arrives in New York?
“People cherished him, children cherished him, however the powers that be did not. They did not purchase him, so was introduced by a automobile storage on Stratford Road after which had a chequered historical past travelling to markets up north.”
After tracking down the original, and learning the family didn’t want to part with it, he contacted Nicholas Monro and asked him to authorise a new version.
It meant a painstaking search for the eccentric artist, his family and a meticulous plan to recreate a version that the artist would be happy with, from the specific colours of his eyes to the precise paintwork and no room for change.
Nicholas, Marcus says, wanted him to be bigger than before. On completion, he went on display on Great Hampton Row.
“We had about 30,000 guests, a billion impressions all over the world on-line and I used to be interviewed for nationwide and worldwide media. It was actually good.”
Internally although, Marcus mentioned King Kong prompted friction between him and colleagues.
“They thought it was a conceit venture for me. It acquired to such a degree that I left and as an alternative of taking severance, I mentioned I might take King Kong with me.
“He went into storage in Shropshire and I tried to find a permanent home for him in Birmingham.”
In the meantime, King Kong was taken to a safe arts storage facility in Sheffield the place he stays to today.
According to a situation report BirminghamDwell has seen from October 2025 – the images from which you are seeing on this article – he was described as being structurally sound, with some paint delamination and a little bit of fowl poop on his massive outdated chest.
How much would it not value to get King Kong again?
Marcus advised BirminghamDwell that he’s now ready to promote King Kong and that he hopes somebody in Birmingham will take into account retaining it right here for public show and that if not, artwork collectors elsewhere on the planet may bid for him at public sale.
According to Marcus, the public sale reserve could be £250,000 and that selections can be made on his future within the subsequent three months.
The proprietor added that he expects annual insurance coverage and upkeep prices to are available in at round £2,000, with transportation for the large sculpture someplace within the area of £4,000.
Paint contact-ups, he estimates, will value an extra £4,000.
Anyone that has curiosity in shopping for him can contact Marcus at kc@seminality.co.uk.
Does Birmingham need King Kong again?
King Kong is a polarising determine.
Some, like Birmingham‘s treasured historian Carl Chinn, really feel he ‘by no means captured the creativeness or affections’ of town, asking: “What’s a gorilla doing in Birmingham? It’s not embedded in Birmingham’s history or people.”
Others, like college librarian James Fisher, describe clapping eyes on him as among the many happiest of all their reminiscences. James cherished him so much, he wrote the complete history of its existence.
“It does the perfect job of provoking a reaction,” James advised BirminghamDwell. “There’s completely no approach with the scale of it you would not have an opinion on it.
“How much avenue sculpture passes you by and also you both do not take it in in any respect, otherwise you merely shrug and say ‘it’s okay’?
“That will never be the case with King Kong. Good or bad he will always grab your attention, but in the best way possible.”
The way forward for King Kong is unsure. We’ll observe this story because it unfolds as finest we will, if you would like to keep looped in.
