Welsh artist Mick Petts created an enormous raised-earth sculpture of a horse that extends over 200 meters in Caerphilly, South Wales. Sultan the Pit Pony is a landscape artwork that was built with 60.000 tons of coal and shale, recalling the fact that horses were used, from the 18th to the 20th century, to carry mines’ coal. The role of the artist was to animate this landform into a recreational landscape & sculptural icon which symbolized the final release of the Pit-ponies onto the mountainside. As soon as the sculpture was completed locals nicknamed it ‘Sultan’ after a prize-winning pony from Penallta Pit. This giant sculpture provides the surrounding woods, grasslands, marsh, and trails carved from the former coal tip of Penallta.
coal and shale create deep curves and contours that give the mound its enchanting depth and awe from above.
Sultan the Pit Pony, work of art is known as the largest figurative earth sculpture in the United Kingdom.
The Pit Pony was developed for Parc Penallta during the artists’ time as Artist in Residence with Groundwork Caerphilly.
the sculpture was constructed using 60,000 tonnes of coal shale along with stone, and earth.
Pit ponies were used to haul coal in underground mines during the mid-18th until the mid-20th century.
