Outstanding in his Field: Antony Gormley

With the arrival of Anthony Gormley’s exhibition at the Spanish Barn, Torre Abbey, in Torquay we thought we’d have a brief look at this well-known British artist.

Raised in the wealthy London borough of Hampstead, Gormley studied at Trinity College, Cambridge before going to India where he studied Buddhism. On his return to Britain he attended Slade School of Art, University College London and had his first solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1981.
Gormley describes his work as “an attempt to materialize the place at the other side of appearance where we all live”. His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but a place.

He won the Turner Prize in 1994  and some of his most notable works include…

The Angel of the North (right)

Standing 66ft (20m) tall with a wingspan of 178ft (54m) across, this impressive statue stands on an hill overlooking the A1 road into Tyneside.

Quantum Cloud

Constructed from a collection of tetrahedral units made from 1.5m long sections of steel. The steel was arranged using a computer model with a random algorithm. It was completed in 1999 in time for the opening of the Millennium Dome and can be found next to this equally impressive structure in London.

Another Place (right)

Perhaps one of Gormley’s most enigmatic of installations is the collection of 100 cast-iron figures placed randomly across the beach at Crosby, near Liverpool. Each figure is made from a cast of Gormley’s own body.

Field for the British Isles

Antony Gormley’s Field for the British Isles will be the centrepiece of a year of contemporary art in the ancient setting of Torre Abbey in Torquay. Built in 1196 by the ‘White Canons’, the Abbey is Torquay’s oldest building and its recent restoration will provide an unusual backdrop for Gormley’s thought-provoking installation.

Gormley’s Turner-prize-winning Field series is a startling and arresting sight: thousands of unglazed, fired, small clay figures, standing closely together, all staring towards the viewer. The Field for the British Isles, comprising 40,000 clay figures, will fill much of the Abbey’s huge Spanish Barn and will be open to the public free of charge from 27th June to 23rd August 2009.

Field features thousands of sculptures made from terracotta, each measuring 80 - 260mm. Figures were made by a community of families in Humberside, under Gormley’s direction. Other versions of Field have been made by families of brickmakers in Mexico, by children in the Amazon basin and by families in Guangzhou, China. Field is a desert seen from afar, an endless beach, a glimpse of how many of us there are. One is left with the sober thought that there are more people alive now than have ever lived in the past. The world’s population doubles within the span of a single human lifetime. Gormley has said that one of the resonances of this work is that it is a reminder that there is only one humanity.