Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, where he continues to live and work. Since his first exhibition in 1981 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, he has exhibited extensively in Britain and abroad. He was awarded the Tate Gallery Turner Prize in 1994.




In the 1960s he studied archaeology, anthropology and art history at Trinity College in Cambridge. He also spent three years in India where he studied Buddhist Meditation. Gormley’s early studies and his knowledge and interest in religions, philosophy and literature underpin his work to this day.



It was in the last 1970s that Gormley first used lead as a medium for his work while he studied sculpture at the Slade School of Art. He branched out into various other mediums such as concrete, iron and clay during the mid 1980s. It was during this period and his work with clay that saw the development of his so-called Fields; a group of clay figures made by communities in Australia, North America, South America, Europe and Britain.




Gormley is interested in the human figure and much of his work explores the body. He uses only one model for his body casts, one form giving a sense of constancy and intimacy; he uses the one model he knows better than any he could employ – his own frame. He knows the shapes and sizes that it will appear in the finished product. He knows what to expect and so his work has very intimate feeling of surveillance. He sees this starting point at a lived moment – a real body in real time. The human figure has been the dominant theme in Gormley’s work since the 1980s. He has said that ‘objects cannot talk of experiences’ but yet uses objects formed from his own figure to express emotions, thoughts and feelings.



Gormley’s best know work, the towering figure The Angel of the North was completed in 1998 and stands outside Gateshead on the A1. I saw it for the first time on our way back from Newcastle and for some inexplicable reason felt incredibly moved upon viewing it even for those few seconds as we drove past. It is constructed from the dimensions of his body and mathematically enlarged to around 65 feet high with a wingspan of 177 feet.

We, as the viewer, are essential to Gormley’s work. As the artist says there is ‘the work, the space and the viewer’. For Gormley it is the activity of looking and feeling that’s important, he wants us to create a context or meaning with ‘this raw material’. He talks about the work being a catalyst or waiting ‘like a trap’ for the life of the viewer to come and fill it.



“I want to deal with existence and I want to use my own existence” he says, “in a sense, as the raw material. It is important to me that each of these works comes from a lived moment. It isn’t an invention; it’s not an attempt to make a significant abstract form; it is a testament to a lived moment that has been transformed from flesh and its mortality into another zone of time.”



This can be compared to the way a person collects fragments from a day out as a reminder of that time. They stand alone as a memento, a scar left on view to conjure memories of that moment so that internal confusion can be released and no longer must be held inside to torment the mind. Along with the internal aspects of his work Gormley allows the viewer to feel less alone with their emotions - a support group – if you will, by viewing his work.



The models secret quests, missions are forever ongoing, forever unfulfilled, they hold their positions, waiting to continue with their journeys. There is a sense of foreboding, a sense of ominous happenings although they never reach a conclusion, an end of any type, they never show their beginning; they’re stuck in a continual loop that never moves, but emits the sense of movements both past and future.




All in all I cannot explain how it is that Gormleys work makes me feel, they are so calming and yet so hostile, we – the viewer - stand there and look at them, waiting for something to happen, but we know nothing ever will, it is an endless cycle, never moving, never changing, just waiting.



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