The Self-Playing Instrument of Water is a permanent, site-specific artwork embedded within the landscape of the Kew Bridge West development. The work was created through a collaboration between poet Alice Oswald, designer Harry Pearce of Pentagram, and specialist fabricators Millimetre.

The artwork takes the form of a 160-metre-long ribbon of corten steel woven through the public realm, engraved with a place-specific poem written especially for Kew Bridge West. Composed of ten rhyming couplets, the poem responds to the area’s historic relationship with water and its role in London’s former filtration and pumping infrastructure. It traces the edge of a historic filter bed and establishes a new east–west pedestrian route through the site.

Inspired by the looped systems found in the nearby Steam Museum and Musical Museum, the circular structure of the poem encourages movement and return: as with water filtration or mechanised music, the ending propels the reader back to the beginning. The text unfolds at walking pace, with a hidden message revealed when the poem is read in reverse.

The poem is rendered in Double Pica Antique, an early industrial slab-serif typeface sourced and redrawn by Pentagram. Applied in copper using an adapted industrial technique developed by Millimetre, the lettering weathers over time, developing a verdigris patina against the evolving rust tones of the steel.

The work was realised as part of the Kew Bridge Cultural Strategy (2011), developed by Futurecity to embed culture into the public realm. It sits alongside other realised commissions at Kew Bridge West, including Big Table, forming a coherent programme in which art, landscape and everyday public life are closely interwoven.

Photography by Nick Turner, Damon Cleary and Ron Bambridge