Antony Gormley

Gormley was the youngest of seven children born to a German mother and a father of Irish descent.[1] His paternal grandfather was an Irish Catholic from Derry who settled in Walsall in Staffordshire.[3] The ancestral homeland of the Gormley Clan (Irish: Ó Goirmleadhaigh) in Ulster was East Donegal and West Tyrone,[4] with most people in both Derry City and Strabane being of County Donegal origin. Gormley has stated that his parents chose his initials, "AMDG", to have the inference Ad maiorem Dei gloriam - "to the greater glory of God".[5] Gormley grew up in a Roman Catholic[6] family living in Hampstead Garden Suburb.[1] He attended Ampleforth College, a Benedictine boarding school in Yorkshire,[1] before reading archaeology, anthropology and the history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1968 to 1971.[1] He travelled to India and the Dominion of Ceylon / Sri Lanka to learn more about Buddhism between 1971 and 1974.[1] After attending Saint Martin's School of Art and Goldsmiths in London from 1974, he completed his studies with a postgraduate course in sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, between 1977 and 1979.

While at the Slade, he met Vicken Parsons, who was to become his assistant and, in 1980, his wife, as well as a successful artist in her own right.[5][7] Gormley said of her:[5]

For the first 15 years she was my primary assistant. She did all of the body moulding... I think there are a lot of myths that art is made by, usually, lone men... I just feel so lucky and so blessed really, that I have such a strong supporter, and lover, and fellow artist.

The couple have three children, a daughter and two sons.[8][9]

Pair of figures separated by plate glass, Regent's Place, London

Gormley's career began with a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1981. Almost all his work takes the human body as its subject, with his own body used in many works as the basis for metal casts.

Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live."[10] Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside."[10] His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical – a trace of a real event of a real body in time.

The 2006 Sydney Biennale featured Gormley's Asian Field, an installation of 180,000 small clay figurines crafted by 350 Chinese villagers in five days from 100 tons of red clay.[11] The appropriation of others' works caused minor controversy and some of the figurines were stolen in protest. Also in 2006, the burning of Gormley's 25-metre high The Waste Man formed the zenith of the Margate Exodus.

In 2007, Gormley's Event Horizon, consisting of 31 life-size and anatomically correct casts of his body, four in cast iron and 27 in fiberglass, was installed on top of prominent buildings along London's South Bank, and installed in locations around New York City's Madison Square in 2010. Gormley said of the New York site that "Within the condensed environment of Manhattan's topography, the level of tension between the palpable, the perceivable and the imaginable is heightened because of the density and scale of the buildings" and that in this context, the project should "activate the skyline in order to encourage people to look around. In this process of looking and finding, or looking and seeking, one perhaps re-assess one's own position in the world and becomes aware of one's status of embedment."[12] Critic Howard Halle said that "Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [Event Horizon] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails."[12]

In July 2009, Gormley presented One & Other, a Fourth Plinth commission, an invitation for members of the public, chosen by lot, to spend one hour on the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square in London.[13] This "living art" happening initially attracted much media attention. It even became a topic of discussion on the long-running BBC radio drama series The Archers, where Gormley made an appearance as himself.[14]

In 2012, Gormley began making sculptures that could be termed as "digital-cubism".[15] Through solid steel cubes the human form is rendered into an array of different postures and poses, boldly standing in a white gallery space.

In March 2014 Gormley appeared in the BBC Four series What Do Artists Do All Day? in an episode which followed him and his team in their Kings Cross studio, preparing a new work – a group of 60 enormous steel figures – called Expansion Field. The work was shown at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.[16]

In May 2015 five life-sized sculptures, Land, were placed near the centre and at four compass points of the UK in a commission by the Landmark Trust to celebrate its 50th anniversary. They are at Lowsonford (Warwickshire), Lundy (Bristol Channel), Saddell Bay (Scotland), the Martello Tower (Aldeburgh, Suffolk), and Clavell Tower (Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset).[17][18] The Dorset sculpture was knocked over into Kimmeridge Bay by a storm in September 2015.[19]

On 6 September 2015, Another Place saw its 10th anniversary at Crosby Beach in Liverpool. Talking of their 10th birthday.

I'm just delighted by the barnacles!

Every time I'm there, just like any other visitor, you're encouraged to linger a bit longer seeing the tide come in and how many of them disappear. And then you're encouraged to linger further until they're revealed again.[20]

In September 2015, Gormley had his first sculpture installed in New Zealand. Stay are identical cast iron human form sculptures, with the first installed in the Avon River in Christchurch's central city, and the other sculpture to be installed in the nearby Arts Centre in early 2016.[21]

Gormley is a Patron of Paintings in Hospitals, a charity that provides art for health and social care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.[22]

In 2017 Gormley curated Inside, an exhibition at the Southbank Centre, London, presented by Koestler Trust showing artworks by prisoners, detainees and ex-offenders. In addition he judged their annual category prize, also on the theme 'inside'.[23]

In 2019 Gormley repopulated the island of Delos with iron 'bodyforms' with the unprecedented site-specific exhibition SIGHT. Organized and commissioned by NEON Organization and presented in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades this project marked the first time that an artist took over the archaeological site of Delos since the island was inhabited over 5,000 years ago and is the first time a contemporary art installation has been unanimously approved by the Greek Archaeological Council of the Ministry of Culture to take place in Delos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site [24][25]. Talking about this exhibition Antony Gormley stated "I treat the body as a place encouraging empathic occupation of that which lies the other side of appearance: what it feels like"[26]. He installed 29 sculptures made during the last twenty years, including 5 new works specially commissioned by NEON Organization, both at the periphery and integrated amongst Delos’s archaeological site and museum animating the geological and archaeological features of the island.[27]

In 2020 it was confirmed that Gormley would be "lending" a sculpture to Kirklees Collage to sit atop its new building at Pioneer House in the town of his birth, Dewsbury as part of a major redevelopment in the town.

Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994 with Field for the British Isles. He was quoted as saying that he was "embarrassed and guilty to have won...In the moment of winning there is a sense the others have been diminished. I know artists who've been seriously knocked off their perches through disappointment."[30]

Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003, and was a Trustee of the British Museum from 2007 to 2015. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Institute of British Architects, honorary doctor of the universities of Teesside, Liverpool, University College London, and Cambridge, and a fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. In October 2010, he and 100 other leading artists signed an open letter to the Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt protesting against cutbacks in the arts.[31]

On 13 March 2011, Gormley was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for the set design for Babel (Words) at Sadler's Wells in collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet.[32] He was the recipient of the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and is the 2013 Praemium Imperiale laureate for sculpture. Gormley was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to the arts.[33]

For Room he received the 2015 Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture.[34]

In 2019, the Royal Academy held an exhibition filling its thirteen main galleries with Gormley's works, including some new (designed to fit the space), some remade for the gallery, and some of his early sculptures, with two rooms of his drawings and sketchbooks.[35]

Gormley's auction record is £3,401,250 for a maquette of the Angel of the North, set at Christie's, London, on 14 October 2011.[36]

External video

Antony Gormley – The Art Fund on YouTube, ArtFund UK

Gormley's website includes images of nearly all of his works up to 2012. The most notable include:

• Bed (1981) - purchased by the Tate Gallery.[7]
• Sound II (1986) – in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral, Winchester, Hampshire, England
• [[] (1988) – Sculpture proposed in the 1980s for the city of Leeds. A maquette for the sculpture can be seen in Leeds City Art Gallery.
• Field (1991; and subsequent recreations)
• Iron:Man (1993) – Victoria Square, Birmingham, England
• Havmann (1995) – Mo i Rana, Arctic Circle City, Norway
• Another Place (1997) – permanently installed at Crosby Beach near Liverpool, England[37]
• Quantum Cloud (1999)– Greenwich, London, England
• Broken Column (1999–2003) – Stavanger, Norway[38]
• Angel of the North (1998) – Low Fell (overlooking the A1 and A167 roads), Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England
• Present Time (2001) – at Mansfield College, Oxford
• Planets (2002) – at the British Library, London.[39]
• Filter (2002) – acquired by Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England, in 2009
• Inside Australia (2003) permanent exhibition at Lake Ballard, Western Australia
• Time Horizon – the Archaeological Park of Scolacium near Catanzaro in Calabria, Southern Italy[40]
• Ferment (2007)[41]
• Blind Light (2007), Hayward Gallery, South Bank, London
• Event Horizon (2007) – along the South Bank of the Thames, London, England; (2010) around Madison Square, New York City; 2012 in São Paulo, Brazil; 2015-16 in Hong Kong
• Reflection II (2008) – acquired by DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 2009
• One & Other (6 July – 14 October 2009) – Trafalgar Square, London, England[13]
• Habitat – Gormley's first permanent installation in the United States, in Anchorage, Alaska on the grounds of the Anchorage Museum, cost an estimated $565,000.
• Another Time XI (2009) – Gormley's sculpture on top of Exeter College, Oxford, overlooking Broad Street[42]
• Horizon Field (2010–2012) – sculpture installation in the Austrian Alps.
• Exposure (2010) – Lelystad, Netherlands
• Cloud Chain (2010) – Les Archives Nationales, Paris, France
• Mothership with Standing Matter[43] (2011) Lillehammer, Norway
• Witness (2011) – on the piazza of the British Library, London; commissioned by English PEN to mark their 90th anniversary.[44]
• Horizon Field Hamburg (2012) – Deichtorhallen, Germany
• Stay (2015/16) – Christchurch, New Zealand[21]
• SIGHT (2019) – Delos Island, Mykonos, Greece; organized and commissioned by NEON Organization and presented in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades of the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports. [45]

• What Do Artists Do All Day?

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Antony Gormley.

• Official website
• 2 paintings by or after Antony Gormley at the Art UK site
• Antony Gormley on Artcyclopedia
• Gormley's exhibition in Guernsey for the International Artist In Residence Programme IAIRP
• Pictures of Gormley's sculpture in Oxford being erected on 15 February 2009
• Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 29th April 2009 (video)
• An interview with Gormley by Edward Lucie Smith in RealMedia format
• Interactive video interview with Gormley and interactive exploration of his work at the Tate Gallery
• Antony Gormley audio: The artist considers his art and his research into the Wellcome collections
• Antony Gormley at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
• Tate: In the Studio: Antony Gormley. A tour of the artist's studio. 1 September 2007
• Studio Visit: Antony Gormley. London, 4 November 2011
• Gormley's artwork Mothership with Standing Matter in Lillehammer, Norway
• White Cube
• Antony Gormley. A tour around his studio Video by Louisiana Channel
• Antony Gormley at TED
• Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections
• Antony Gormley on the sacred island of Delos talking about SIGHT exhibition